Support for SandStorm Photoshop Action

The release of Photoshop CC 2018 required that I update the Actions listed below.

If you are now using CC 2018 and you downloaded these Actions before October 19, 2017, you will need to re-download that Action from your ‘Downloads’ area and install the Action found inside the ‘CC 2018 +‘folder. Each Action listed below has been tested and working.

Watercolor - Vintage – Hand Drawn – Smoke - Fire - Glory - Lines - Storm - PolyEx - Grunge - Circles - Tekniq - Synergy - Energy - Charcoal - Sundance - Shatter 2 – Firestorm - Grunge 2 – Explosion - Fracture - Sparkler - Canvas 2 – Spectrum - Flex - Fragment - Eclipse - Rising Sun

Please make sure that for any Action that requires brushes to be loaded, that ‘Pen Pressure for Opacity’ is disabled prior to running the Action. I noticed that after the update this option became enabled by default, which can create lots of errors.

Photoshop’s release of CC 2017.0.1 required that I update 4 Actions. If you have purchased any of the Actions below before December 15 2016, you must re-download the item from your downloads area and install the Action found inside the “CC 2017.0.1+” folder.

Liquify 2 – Fury - Blades – Vintage

If you are receiving emails regarding item updates from Sevenstyles, you will need to follow the instructions outlined in that email and re-download that item from your downloads area on Graphic River. You will only receive an email once the updated item is ready to be re-downloaded.

All other Sevenstyles Actions have been tested and working on Photoshop CC 2017.0.1.

Photoshop’s release of CC 2017.0.0 required that I update 15 Actions. If you have purchased any of the Actions below before November 4 2016, you must re-download the item from your downloads area and install the Action found inside the “CC 2017+” folder.

Grid – Cell Shader 2 – Energy – Canvas 2 – Vintage – Dripping Gold – Blades – Flames – Cosmic – Fury – Shimmer – Canvas – Fractal – StarDust – Liquify 2

If you are receiving emails regarding item updates from Sevenstyles, you will need to follow the instructions outlined in that email and re-download that item from your downloads area on Graphic River. You will only receive an email once the updated item is ready to be re-downloaded.

All other Sevenstyles Actions have been tested and working on Photoshop CC 2017.0.0.

Photoshop made a bug fix update to Photoshop CC 2015.5 on the 10th August 2016. This update required me to update a series of Actions which I have now completed and re-uploaded.

If you are receiving emails regarding item updates from Sevenstyles, you will need to follow the instructions outlined in that email and re-download that item from your downloads area on Graphic River. After you have downloaded the updated item, replace your existing Action with the new action found inside the “CC 2015.5+” folder.

You MUST update your Photoshop to version CC 2015.5.1(or greater) which was made available on the 10th August 2016 from your Adobe Creative Cloud. Some users are attempting to use the updated Actions on the first release of Photoshop CC 2015.5 which will have errors because that initial release of Photoshop CC 2015.5 had bugs. To check you are using CC 2015.5.1 or greater, go to the menu, ‘Help > About Photoshop CC…‘

After you have updated Photoshop and installed the new action inside the “CC 2015.5+” folder, you will be set to go. Each item I update I test across several photos to ensure the bugs have been fixed.

Below is the complete list of updated and fully tested actions for Photoshop CC2015.5.1 (or greater). No other Sevenstyles Action has been affected by the Photoshop update. If you have downloaded any of the actions below before August 10 2016, you will need to re-download the file from your downloads area and load up the action inside the “CC 2015.5+” folder.

Sandstorm - Lines - Fury - ModernArt – Dispersion 2 – PolyEx - Synergy - Soft Focus – Architekt - Lively - Hyperfuze - Amplify - Flux - Konstruckt - Fire - Destrukt - ModernArt 4 – Fury 3 – Grid - Rise - Cosmic - Liquif 2 – Sparkle - Forge - Fearless - Moonstone - Color Splash – Shimmer - Liquify - Paradigm - Plasma - Watercolor & Pencil – Grunge 2 – Charcoal- Street - StarDust- Impasto - Strokes - Canvas - Abstract

Why Sevenstyles Photoshop Actions?

Sevenstyles Photoshop Actions are designed to help save you hours/days of work per photo. Even for Photoshop experts, re-creating these effects manually could take upwards of 1 day per photo. However, with the Sevenstyles Photoshop Actions you can get the effects created with a just few clicks and in under 2 minutes! The best part is that you don’t even need to know how to use Photoshop!

After each Action is complete, you have full layer control to tweak the design as you wish. Each action comes with a comprehensive video tutorial teaching you how to set up your Photoshop file as well as in-depth layer customization techniques that can really make your design pop. Here is my YouTube channel.

The actions can also act as a learning platform for Photoshop beginners. As everything remains layered after the Action is complete, you can study how the effect has been built as well as making your own adjustment to the layers to learn how that can affect the design.

In addition, the Sevenstyles Photoshop Actions can help you make money. Below are some ideas to get you started…

• Sell photos on stock photo websites – You can use the Actions to add visual effects to your photos to sell online on a photo marketplace like photodune. Adding visual effects to your photos can give you the competitive edge and help get you more sales.


• Sell art prints – Use Actions such as Artist, Watercolor, Oilpaint,Sketch, Hand Drawn, Lines and ModernArt (1,2,3 and 4) to create artistic prints which you can sell.
  
• Get more design jobs by completing projects faster – these actions will take off hours and hours of work for you, why not use these extra hours of freedom to get more jobs!


• Create a design service – You could create a service offering to add visual effects to peoples photos. Once you get familiar with a Sevenstyles action(s), you could be creating lots of designs within an hour. Why not use this speed to your advantage and attract customers who dont have Photoshop and who may want these effects added to their photos?


• Referral cut earnings- did you know on Envato Market sites you can make 30% of a referred user’s first purchase or initial deposit? Since the Sevenstyles actions are the fastest selling anywhere online – this is a great opportunity to make money from them. Read here on how to get started and here for some additional affiliate tips. Take a look at this post about the SandStorm Photoshop action which and has now been shared over 130,000 times!... and it has the persons referral link!
  
• Join the Envato Affiliates Competition – By joining this competition, you have a chance to share in a US $30,000 prize pool. All you need to do is sign up and start referring people to Sevenstyles top selling items! TIP: Refer people to the Sandstorm Photoshop Action as this is the number 1 selling item on Graphic River and converts very well. Its also a good idea to refer people to my profile page as I have the complete large thumbnail list of over 100 Actions to choose from.

1. Make sure you are running the English version of Photoshop. If you are not using the English version, you can follow this procedure demonstrated in this video. If you are using Adobe Creative Cloud, you can also change your language with this method.


2. Your Photoshop document must be in RGB color mode. To check this, go to the menu Image -> Mode -> RGB Color


3. Your Photoshop document must be setup in 8bits/Channel. To check this, to the menu Image -> Mode -> 8bits/Channel.


4. Use a high resolution photo. Recommended sizes are between 1500px – 4000px (optimal size is 2000 – 4000). For images under 800px, you increase the likeliness of an error occurring as there is not enough pixels for Photoshop to perform certain tasks.


5. If the action requires brushes for it to work, please ensure your brush opacity is set to 100% before playing the action. If brushes are included in the download, then they must be loaded into the brushes panel and set to 100% opacity before playing the action. This step is demonstrated at the beginning of the action tutorial. Also ensure ‘Use Pen Pressure for Opacity’ is turned off. – see image below.


6. Check that your photo is setup at 72dpi or greater. A photo with a dpi less than 72 can cause actions to throw errors. To check this, go to the menu Image > Image Size and check the Resolution number.

1. Do not use the actions on logos, text or clip art style illustrations. Some actions may work some may not – as these actions are intended for use on photos only. The more color and contrast in your photos, the better the results will be. Since logos and text often lack color range and detail, they are not suited for use with these actions.


2. Avoid using the actions on near pitch black or white photos. Photos that are predominately black or white often lack detail and contrast between pixels. The actions may have a hard time finding enough detail in your photo to create the effects if the area that you brush is all black or white. You can try boosting the contrast/brightness of your photo before running an action to increase the amount of detail in the final effects.


3. When brushing over your photo, do not brush very thin lines. The actions generally use the pixels within the area that you brush to create the effects. So if you only use a 2 pixel brush for example, then the action only has a very small amount of space to create the effects – this can lead to errors. Refer to the preview images on the item pages here on GraphicRiver for brushing examples – here is one.


4. When brushing over your photo, do not brush with a very low opacity. The area that you define on the “brush” layer is the area which will be used by the Action to create the effect. So if you brush very faintly onto the “brush” layer, then Photoshop may have trouble grabbing enough visible pixels to perform certain tasks, which will ultimately cause errors. A good rule of thumb here is to look at the item preview image I have created, and take note of how I have brushed over my photo. For example: Notice how I have brushed over my photo with the Watercolor Photoshop Action in comparison to the Flames Photoshop Action.


5. Do not use the actions on extremely large images. Photoshop begins to disable various filter effects and commands when running actions on very large images, and this cause errors in actions. It can also take considerable computer processing power to playback and will also increase the playback time of the effect. Not only this, but for actions that require brushes, the maximum brush size Photoshop allows is 2500px. So if your running the action on a 7000px photo, the brush graphics created by the action will appear much smaller. This is why working on photos in the 2000 – 4000px range is optimal

The common cause for errors in actions are corrupted Photoshop preference files. This can cause an action to throw unusual errors that prevent the action from completing. Most of the time you don’t even know they are affected. This is generally the case if you have not run a Photoshop action before, in a very long time or have upgraded to a newer version of Photoshop.

Here is more information about the preference files

If you have checked the file setup instructions in the video tutorial, looked over the solutions to your error on this help page and are still experiencing errors across multiple photos, then I recommend resetting the preference files.

To reset your preferences, hold down Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys (Mac: Command, Option, Shift) while starting up Photoshop. A dialog box will appear asking if you wish to delete the preferences/settings file. Delete it and then run the action again.

If you are using Photoshop CC, you can also reset your preferences by going to the menu ‘Edit > Preferences > General’ and then selecting ‘Reset Preferences on Quit’.

If you still receive an error after resetting the preference files, test out the action on another photo. If you receive the same error then there may be an issue within your Photoshop or the setup of your PSD file – if you only receive the error on one photo, please send me your PSD file so I can investigate and help you out. All I need in your psd file is your photo and ‘brush’ layer created. If you can also indicate what version of Photoshop you are using along with the first error you see – this will just help speed up the process of solving it for you.

Below are a few more things to try that have proven to solve errors:

1. Try purging the history as this can sometimes clear out any problems. To do this go to the menu Edit -> Purge -> All. This is a great thing to do every time before playing an action.
2. Restart Photoshop
3. Re-download the action from your downloads area
4. Install the action into your root Photoshop directory
5. If the action requires brushes for it to work, firstly make sure you have loaded them into your brushes panel and secondly ensure the brush opacity is set to 100% before playing the action.
6. If you are running the an Action on Windows, when opening up Photoshop, right click on the Photoshop load icon and click ‘Run as Administrator’.

Below are some common errors/questions with solutions

If you are using an Action which utilises the art history brush then you may get this error.

The art history brush takes a snapshot of the opened state of your photo to refer to during the Action playback. If you open your photo and make changes to it such as cropping, trimming, using the Image Size or Canvas Size commands, or rotating any amount other than 180 degrees it will create the error.

If you make any changes to your photo, save it, reopen the photo and then run the Action to remove the error.

This error can show on Windows OS when Photoshop does not have administrative privileges to perform certain tasks.

If you are getting this error, close down your Photoshop. When you go to reopen Photoshop, right click on the Photoshop start icon and select ‘Run as an administrator’. If you would like to permanently set Photoshop to run as an administrator, then right click on the Photoshop start icon and select ‘Properties > Compatability’ and then check ‘Run this program as an administrator’.

If Photoshop is freezing during the Action playback and you need to force quit Photoshop, you may need to disable ‘Use OpenCL’ under your Graphics Processor Settings.

Navigate to ‘Edit > Preferences > Performance’, then under ‘Graphics Processor Settings’ select ‘Advanced Settings’. In the pop-up window, uncheck ‘Use OpenCL’. Now restart Photoshop and play the Action again.

Photoshop disables the ‘Twirl’ command in action playback on very large photos. Try scaling down your photo into the range of 1500 – 4000px and running the action again.

Please check you have the checkbox ticked for “Add Copy to Copied Layers and Groups” inside the layer panel options. To locate this, go to the top right hand corner icon in the layer panel and select Panel Options. This is also demonstrated at the beginning of each video tutorial.

When an error pops up saying a layer is missing, Photoshop has failed to create a layer that is needed to complete the action. Even though the action has commands recorded to create the layer, sometimes Photoshop can do strange things in the play back of the action and essentially skip over a step.

This is Photoshop at fault and not the action itself. Methods such as resetting your preferences, re-installing the action or restarting Photoshop have proven to solve this. You can also try re-download the action from your downloads area.

To ensure that it is your Photoshop in question – please run the action on another photo. If you do not receive the same error, please email me your PSD that is creating the error. If you do get the same error, this confirms that it is your Photoshop and you will need to investigate using some of the above mentioned methods.

Also ensure you are brushing a large enough area over your photo before running the action – though it is very unlikely that this will cause the problem.

This error is most commonly caused by incorrectly setup Photoshop files. Please ensure you have watched the beginning of the Action video tutorial to see if you have set up your file correctly. Below are the solutions to this error:

• Double check you have created your ‘brush’ layer to brush onto before playing the action. This step is covered at the beginning of each video tutorial. Also, ensure you have spelled ‘brush’ all in lowercase letters and with no spaces. The action will not work at all if there is an uppercase letter.


• Ensure you have loaded the correct action for your version of Photoshop – i.e. if you use CC2015, use the action found inside the ‘CC+’ folder included in the download. If you use CS6, use the action found inside the ‘CS6’ folder. If you receive an item update email, follow the instructions in that email and re-download the Action from your downloads area. You then need to replace your existing Action with the updated one you have just downloaded.


• Make sure you have loaded the brushes into your brushes panel before playing the action. If there are brushes included in the action download ( ’.abr’ file ), then it must be loaded before playing the action or you get this error.


• Make sure you are using the English version of Photoshop.


• If you have done everything above and are still getting errors across mutiple photos, please reset your preference files. To do that, hold down Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys (Mac: Command, Option, Shift) while starting up Photoshop. A dialog box will appear asking if you wish to delete the preferences/settings file. Delete it and then run the action again. If you are using Photoshop CC, you can reset your preference files by going to the menu, ‘Edit > Preferences > General’ and then selecting ‘Reset Preferences on Quit‘


• Lastly, email me if you are still stuck. Indicate in your email the action you are using as well as your version of Photoshop. My email address is sevenstylesinfo@gmail.com

This error is specifically associated with the SandStorm Photoshop Action.

The error is caused by corrupted user preference files. Firstly test the action across a few different photos, if you get the same error message then please reset your preference files.

To reset the preferences, hold down Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys (Mac: Command, Option, Shift) while starting up Photoshop. A dialog box will appear asking if you wish to delete the preferences/settings file. Delete it and then run the action again. You can also reset your preference files on Photoshop CC by going to the menu, ‘Edit > Preferences > General’ and then selecting ‘Reset Preferences on Quit’.

This error occurs when Photoshop cannot find enough visible pixels to make a selection. This can happen in a few situations listed below.

• If the action requires brushes for it to work, please ensure your brush opacity is set to 100% before playing the action.
• You have brushed over your photo with a very faint brush. Please use a brush with 100% opacity when brushing onto your ‘brush’ layer.
• You have only brushed a very small area or very thin lines. Most of my actions use the area within the area that you brush to create effects out of – so it is important you create a large enough brushed area to avoid Photoshop running into selection errors.
• In some rare cases, the resolution of your document might be set to something very small like 1. Ensure your document is set to 72dpi or greater before playing the action.

1. Check the resolution of your document. This often appears if your document has a resolution of 1. Sometimes you will not know this until you check it.


2. Go to the menu Image—> Image Size and check that your photo Resolution is NOT lower than 72. Use a range between 72-300


3. This error can also show if your photo is too small. Please avoid using photo’s under 800px. The smaller your photo the less pixels Photoshop has to create certain effects. If it cannot find enough pixels it may throw an error.


4. Try running the action again, this time brush a much larger area over your photo. A lot of the action effects are created using the pixels within the area that you brush. So if you brush a very small area, the action then only has a small amount of pixels to create the effect.

Below are the solutions to this error:

• If the Action you are using requires brushes to be loaded, please check you have loaded them into your brushes panel before running the Action. An example of this can be seen at 4:15 of the Watercolor Photoshop Action tutorial. Check the beginning of the video tutorial for the Action you are using to see if brushes are required for that Action. A good rule of thumb here is if there is a file with a ”.abr” extension included in the download, then it must be loaded into your brushes panel before playing the Action.


• Ensure your brush opacity is set to 100% before playing the Action.


• Ensure you have disabled ‘Use pen pressure for opacity’ – see image below:

  



• Ensure you are not brushing onto your photo with a very low brush opacity.

The Oil Paint filter was introduced in Photoshop CS6. So firstly ensure you are running CS6 and above to use this effect.

Secondly, if the Oil Paint filter is greyed out for you under the ‘Filter > Stylize’ menu, then please check the following below:

• Make sure that your document is RGB. Oil Paint won’t work on color spaces other than RGB (e.g. CMYK, Lab, etc.)
• If you’re on Windows, make sure you’re running a 64-bit OS with the 64-bit version of Photoshop. OpenCL requires 64-bit.
• Make sure Use OpenCL is checked under Preferences > Performance > Advanced Settings.



• Make sure that your video card driver is up to date with the latest from the vendor website.
• Note: If your video card does not support OpenCL v1.1 or higher, you may need to purchase an upgraded video card that supports OpenCL v1.1 or higher to gain access to the Oil Paint filter.

This error will occur if you have not loaded the brushes into your brushes panel before playing the action.

If brushes are included in the download, then they must be loaded before playing the action. Instructions on loading the brushes into the brushes panel are demonstrated at the beginning of the items video tutorial.

Note that mainly my newer actions require brushes. If there is a ”.abr” file (eg. ‘example_brushes.abr’) included in the download, then it must be loaded into the brushes panel for the action to work.

This error can appear for a few reasons:

• You have not loaded the correct action version into your Photoshop, i.e. if you use CC2015, you may have loaded the CS6 version into Photoshop. Some of my actions require you to load a specific version into your Photoshop, others do not – so just double check the folder structure in your downloaded action.
• Your Photoshop preference files need to be reset.
• You have not created your ‘brush’ layer.

This error will appear if you have loaded the incorrect Action version into your version of Photoshop.

If you are using Photoshop CC, make sure you load the Action that’s found inside the “CC+” folder included in the download.

If you are using Photoshop CS6, make sure you load the Action that’s found inside the “CS6” folder included in the download.

If you are using Photoshop CC and there is no “CC+” folder included in the download, then use the Action in the previous Photoshop version i.e. CS6.

IMPORTANT: If you are using Photoshop CC 2015.5, you will need to update your Photoshop to at least CC 2015.5.1. The initial release of CC 2015.5 came with bugs that affected Action playback. The bugs were addressed in the Photoshop update on August 10, 2016.

You need to set your photo as the background before running the action. You cannot simply name your layer Background and lock it.

To set your photo as the background, select your photo layer and go to the menu Layer -> New -> Layer from Background. I demonstrate this at the beginning of each video tutorial for your reference.

Important: you only need to do this step if you open up your photo and your background layer isn’t called ‘Background’ and has the lock symbol. In nearly all cases you only need to perform this step if the photo you open is a .PNG file, or any file with transparency.

All of my actions needs to be run in 8bits/Channel. In 16bit or 32bit, lots of Filter Gallery effects are not available. To change your photo to 8bit, go to the menu Image -> Mode -> 8bits/Channel.

You will also get this error if your PSD file is setup in CMYK color mode. Please ensure your document is in RGB color mode before playing the action.

Below are commons causes of the ‘Make’ error with solutions:

• Make sure you have brushed onto your ‘brush’ layer with 100% opacity. Some people have experienced this error because they have brushed very faintly onto their brush layer and Photoshop has then had a hard time gathering enough information from that layer to perform certain tasks.
• If the action requires brushes, make sure they are loaded into your brushes panel before running the action. Also check that your brush opacity is set to 100% before playing the action.
• Your preference files are corrupted and need to be reset. If you have checked the above points and are still getting the same error across multiple photos, its best to reset your preference files as their may be a bug built up in your Photoshop affecting action playback. This has proven to solve the ‘Make’ error in many cases. To reset the preferences, hold down Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys (Mac: Command, Option, Shift) while starting up Photoshop. A dialog box will appear asking if you wish to delete the preferences/settings file. Delete it and then run the action again. If you are using Photoshop CC, you can also reset your preferences by going to the menu, ‘Edit > Preferences > General’ and selecting ‘Reset Preferences on Quit’.

If all else fails, please send me your PSD file setup so I can investigate.

Below are the solutions:

• You have not loaded the brushes required for the action to work. Just ensure you have loaded the brushes into the brushes panel before playing the action
• Your brush opacity is set too low. Make sure your brush opacity is set to 100% before playing the action.
• You have brushed very faintly onto the ‘brush’ layer before running the action. Make sure you brush onto the brush layer with 100% opacity.

Double check that you have spelt ‘brush’ with NO capital letters. So no capital B. This step is covered at the beginning of the video tutorial for each action. Also ensure you have actually created the ‘brush’ layer – some users have also been brushing directly onto their background layer instead of creating the ‘brush’ layer to brush onto, this will cause lots of errors in the action. This step is covered at the beginning of each video tutorial.

Unfortunately no. There is lots of functionality missing in PSE which makes the action work. The lowest version I test down to is Photoshop CS3. Please double check the minimum CS requirements listed on the item preview image page before downloading – as each action may differ.

If you receive this error, please update your Photoshop to at least version (CC 2015.5.1).

If you have purchased any of the items below before 10th August 2016, then you must re-download that item from your downloads area to obtain the updated Action. All the items below now included a specific “CC 2015.5+” folder (or greater) which you must now load into your Photoshop.

Sandstorm - Lines - Fury - ModernArt – Dispersion 2 – PolyEx - Synergy - Soft Focus – Architekt - Lively - Hyperfuze - Amplify - Flux - Konstruckt - Fire - Destrukt - ModernArt 4 – Fury 3 – Grid - Rise - Cosmic - Liquif 2 – Sparkle - Forge - Fearless - Moonstone - Color Splash – Shimmer - Liquify - Paradigm - Plasma - Watercolor & Pencil – Grunge 2 – Charcoal- Street - StarDust- Impasto - Strokes - Canvas - Abstract