Upgrade your images the easy way with Photoshop actions.
Photoshop can be overwhelming, but you don’t have to be a Photoshop expert to take advantage of the Photoshop Action feature. We are breaking it down and providing the who, what, when, where, why and how of Actions so you can add a wow-factor to your work just like the pros.
Who uses Actions?
You and anyone else working in a creative digital space, who is looking to make photo edits and enhancements. You can build your own action, or you can install an action that’s already been created by a developer. The easiest option is to install and apply a Photoshop action someone else has created. Browse through the GraphicRiver library or check out our curated list of the 55 must-have Photoshop actions to get started. Once you have installed the action, you can apply it to any and all of your images.
What are they?
Photoshop Actions are time-saving tools that allow you to add captivating effects to your files with just a few clicks. With Photoshop Actions you can easily add a weather or elemental effect, some sparkle, or a watercolor or sketch effect. The possibilities are truly endless.
For example, using the Sandstorm Photoshop action, you can add a dispersion effect to take your photo to the next level and transform an image from this:
To this:
But adding a special effect to your file takes a lot of time if you have to run through each step manually every time you want to alter an image. Photoshop Actions combine, save and automate all of the steps you need to take, so that you can add the effect with just a few clicks. They are available for download in the form of .ATN files.
Photoshop actions can save you hours of work and frustration. Use them to speed up your workflow and bypass the arduous process of completing each technical step every time you want to alter your image. Actions are shortcuts for creatives looking to produce stunning professional results quickly.
How do you install and create them:
To take the guess work out of the installation process, graphics guru, Kirk Nelson provided a simple step by step guide you can follow detailing how to install Photoshop Actions.
Once the action is installed, it’s easy to use. The Photoshop Actions available on Envato’s GraphicRiver include demonstrations and customization tutorials so you can make the most of the action.
If you want to get a bit more technical and create your own personalized action, I suggest you check out Kirk’s course about how to build your own Photoshop Action.
For even more information about Photoshop actions, check out the below blog posts and tutorials on Tuts+.
One of the biggest Motion Design trends of this year is Fast Typography. A great example of which is Apple’s “Don’t Blink” video that dropped in late 2016, following their ‘Big Launch’ event announcing the iPhone 7, AirPods and updates to the Apple Watch, among other things.
The look and feel fit Apple’s sleek, minimal style, but also managed to cram a lot of information into two minutes in an engaging, digestible way.
Trend Origins
The functionality behind this type of animation and design draws on the learnings of Evelyn Wood, an American educator and businessperson who popularized the term “speed reading”, as well as building the systems that encouraged it.
More and more today, however, software platforms have been offering different approaches to speed reading. You can find quite a few of these platforms and apps, with Spritz and Spreeder being some of the most popular. They usually apply a variation of a method called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). The basic concept is to display your text word by word, or by in small groups of words, one after the other. This way you can speed up the reading process by increasing the average rate of words-per-minute displayed on the screen.
Practical Advantages
In an era where we’re constantly overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown at us, the popularity of templates that help deliver messages in fast, visually engaging ways has risen.
Video has thus experienced aggressive growth as an ideal medium to deliver this type of content. Which is why it’s no surprise that the world’s appetite for fast typography templates has grown.
And so today we’ll be taking a look at 12 terrific fast typography templates you can use to display information in your next video.
Similar to Stomp, in that it’s also clearly inspired by Apple’s “Don’t Blink” commercial, Rhythmic Typography shows what’s possible with some simple black and white typography, and some clever animation.
The way the text can slide from side to side becoming different words each time is genius. Even the way words can light up and fade out, almost like an elevator, shows off the power of indicating concepts rather than showing them.
Rhythmic Opener by Levmotion is fresh and eye catching. The little jolt of movement it adds really makes you look at the words on the screen. And that type of effect is also very in vogue right now.
The template also applies a sort of magnifying tile effect on top of the background image, as the project shakes. Pop a great audio track underneath and marry the jolts up with the accents of the beat, and you’ll see how easy it is to make an engaging video out of nothing more than typography and some still images.
If you liked that last template, but aren’t trying to literally shake your audience into paying attention, then consider the smooth stylings of Urban Opener // Dynamic Opener by makcinema.
This template incorporates a similar square ripple effect to the last one, but it’s a bit more subtle. In a similar vein, the animation of the typography is more on the smooth side, easing into place a little slower.
Simple and clever, this template plays with size and scale. It’s all about energy with each image drawing the eye by appearing, growing bigger or smaller, and then being replaced by another image in quick succession.
The words appear one by one. Some sit in the middle of the screen, some take up the whole screen. It’s all about variation, keeping you engaged by keeping you on your toes. You can never be too sure where to look.
This next template is very fresh, yet very accessible and I think it achieves this by being very colorful and playful in its animation. Although it’s definitely fast with a real drive to it, it’s not aggressive. In fact, there’s an element of softness to the way things animate. From the less jolty way each word lands on screen, to the way each individual letter eases into position, even the way the images drop down with a soft, blurred effect before touching the base of the frame.
This template by Qwadro is all about showing you a lot without making it feel that way.
Full of wipes and slides with ease, what really amplifies the smoothness of this template by romlam is that the background moves in sync, but in contrary motion to the text. The effect? It feels like a bigger movement than it is, and draws the eye without anything huge actually going on.
Who likes gradients? Don’t Wink – Typographic Intro by MbrEffects puts fresh white text up against beautiful, bright gradients. Sometimes they’re solid, sometimes they’re not. You can have your text in a box, or out of a box. The choice is yours. The animations are simple but pleasant. And this template overall is versatile enough that you can use it for pretty much any video.
Extremely stylish and slick, Fashion Promo by Fixit is a great choice for (would you believe it) a fashion brand. It feels modern and is best suited that kind of broad, one word at a time style of commercial. It’s fast and slick, but not alienating.
This template makes use of the full width and height of your screen, creating what feels like a fully responsive template. It could just be the images they’ve used in the demo reel, but its has a very slick, sophisticated feel to it. The glassy effect that goes over the images mid-cube transition are one example.
It’s a template that works best when being used to deliver a very concise message. It’s fast paced, restrained and very chic.
This one’s great if you want a visually exciting template. The images and footage you add to this template really play a big part in creating the vibe this demo is selling. But the shapes made in and around the text are also just as effective.
If you’re looking for something polished with a capital ‘P’, then this next one’s for you.
Relying on a mix of restraint, high color contrast, and text that literally feels like it’s dancing, Typography Opener by Motion-Bear feels ultra modern, ultra professional, and incredibly chic.
It’s something I could see a brand like Uber or Microsoft using. Or see on the TV screens at Apple’s Genius Bar and not blink. #dontblink
And that’s our list of twelve terrific fast typography templates that you can buy right now on VideoHive!
Thanks to the Envato Community for helping us put this list together. You can check out the rest of their suggestions for great fast typography templates on the Envato Forums.
Google’s AMP project is designed to create mobile friendly, fast loading sites as well as to wrestle intrusive advertising methods back under control. Regardless of whether you choose to use AMP or not, I recommend checking it out, because if nothing else it will give you a thorough list of optimization tasks you should consider implementing into your projects either way.
At TutsPlus we’ve been steadily assembling information and guides on AMP since it was first launched, and in this article we’re rounding them all up into one place so you can conveniently take advantage of these learning resources. Together they’ll take you all the way from asking “What is AMP anyway?” through to being confident to code any AMP project and get that green lighting mark of AMP validation.
Let’s jump in!
Getting Familiar with AMP
AMP can include some terrain that’s somewhat tricky to negotiate if you just dive in head first. So before you put hand to keyboard and start coding let’s get familiar with what AMP is, what it can do for you, and how to decide if it’s something you want to use in your projects.
The whole point of AMP is to make your sites faster, so of course the real question is, will it actually do so?
In this article we get into the guts of AMP, pull it apart and find out what its moving parts are. Through this we determine whether AMP can make your sites faster, if there are equivalent non-AMP techniques, and if it will help you in the context of your specific projects.
Get Coding
Once you’re across the concepts behind AMP it’s time to hook into some coding. These tutorials and learning guides will get you rolling.
In this tutorial you’ll be creating an AMP page in a way that’s designed to give you practical experience with all the key components of AMP. You’ll start with boilerplate code and from there learn everything you need to know to make the most common types of AMP pages.
If learning from videos is more your thing, jump over and take the course “Up and Running with AMP”, which builds on the above tutorial.
The course will step you through how to get your basics setup, like creating a local preview and activating the AMP validation tool. From there we’ll take a look at how CSS works in an AMP context, how to create AMP friendly images, videos, galleries, web fonts & embedded tweets, and ways you can use coding techniques to create interesting layout effects while staying AMP valid.
If you’re in the photography or videography field you might not need to know how to use every AMP element under the sun, you might just need to know how to use AMP to speed up and smooth out the delivery of your images and videos. In this tutorial we’ll be stepping through just that.
One of the most awkward things about AMP can be its requirement that all CSS needs to be inline. That’s fine for a single page, but when you are creating sites with multiple pages you’ll need a solution that allows you to still write your CSS externally then bring it into the <head> section of your AMP pages later.
In this tutorial we’ll go through two ways you can do this, one using Pug, (formerly known as Jade), and the other using PHP.
Making AMP mesh in with a CMS can take a little more effort, given you don’t have full control over the markup being produced. However, with a little help from the side of the CMS, creating AMP sites on WordPress and Ghost can be a straight forward affair.
WordPress has an official plugin to add AMP support that makes the basics pretty much plug and play. However with the addition of Yoast’s SEO plugin you can get some extra control over your AMP pages. You’ll also need to know how to make sure any plugins you install don’t mess up your AMP validation, and how to go about further customization should you need it. We cover all these things in this article.
Ghost has AMP support built right in with the need for any plugins, but if you want to have your AMP pages integrated into your theme’s style you’ll want to learn how to create your own AMP template. We go through how you can do that in this tutorial.
Wrapping Up
That should be everything you need to get started with Google AMP, no matter what kind of site project you’re working on. Enjoy!
