I spent some time yesterday looking around Adobe Exchange for an action to make some images look old and distressed. I downloaded a few, but wasn’t real happy with them, so I ended up writing my own action (not to say mine is perfect, but it did what I wanted). Below is a before and after:
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If you are interested in trying it out for yourself you can download it here.
The normal installation spot on a windows machine is “Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets\Photoshop Actions.” Let me know what you think.
I’ve never messed with “actions” before. I like hte image and the way the old ramshackle building looks even more old and ramshackle. The only thing that I am somewhat hestitant about is the edges; its as if they are too uniformly worn. But that is not a serious criticism.
I worked on the edges, and uploaded a new version of the action . . . http://www.vindaugagallery.com/Vintage2.atn
p.s. everytime you apply the action you get a slightly different result (several different random layers)
cool. I like the look. That’s some great textures. I’m gonna swipe it and play with it when I get back to the office.
HA!
I tried it on a color photograph (that may not have had the necessary tools loaded or backgrounds in it) and got some amusing results. I got a lot of errors about things not being available. But, that doesn’t surprise me, I had to read the help file just to figure out how to use an ‘action.’ I will have to mess with it further later.
I designed it for color photos, but it will only work completely in cs2. It doesn’t use any tools or filters that aren’t built into photoshop, and you don’t have to prep the images in any way. So what version of photoshop did you try it on?
I tested it out on a copy of CS (vers 8.0) and it numbers the layers differently, so I altered it to work in CS, that version is at http://www.vindaugagallery.com/Vintage2CS.atn
This is a great action, any chance you will update it so that it’s compatible with CS3?
Thanks. jan
I probably will not mess with cs3 until it is out of beta, but I would assume it should work without too much modification.
I assume you are using the beta, what has your impression so far been?