The title image on this page was not created by me, well kind of it was and kind of it wasn't. A given Photoshop imaging effect may have 10 or more individual steps to create the desired effect. By the time you have finished the 10th step you can't remember what steps 1-9 were??? Besides, if you create a really cool effect on text or an image, you may want to use it again. Photoshop 5.5 has a solution to those problems. They are called actions.
Basically, an action is a recorded series of steps to create a graphic. It is almost like recording on a tape recorder or answering machine. You can start a recording and decide if you like it or not. If you do, you save the recording(action in Photoshop). If you don't you delete it and try again. The actions palette is located in the same place as the Layers palette. 
Click the Actions tab to bring it forward. To begin recording an new action, pulldown on the horizontal triangle circled in orange to the left and select "New Action". A window will popup that will allow you to name your new action and hit the record button. Go through all of the changes to the graphic you wish to do in the action. When you are done, pull down on the horizontal triangle
, and select "Stop Recording". Listed in the window are all the actions that are stored in recent memory. The cool thing about actions is that you can replay them over and over again to get the same effect for different graphics. You can also load a new action in from anyplace on your computer. This is where is gets fun and easy. You can also download Photoshop actions someone else has created to your computer. Then you simply, pull down on the horizontal triangle, select "Load Action". It will open a window that allows you to load the newly downloaded action into Photoshop. You then go horizontal triangle, "Play" and the action will run all of the steps and create the finished graphic for you. Many actions will stop and prompt you to select colors, text, etc. But it is very simple. The website, ActionXChange.com has thousands of free actions to download. Make sure you choose one that is compatible with your version of Photoshop. Then, have fun!!
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