I have been working on a new product – it’s called Easy Actions – which is all about using Photoshop Actions to make stunningly beautiful graphics.

In this article I want to cover:

• why this product is important
• what it does
• how you can do it
• where and when you can get it

Why Easy Actions is Important

In his book, The Brutal Truth, John Reese says “Mediocre graphics no longer cut it, you must use beautiful top-notch design (no exceptions).  The days of ugly websites that make a lot of money are over.”

If you don’t know who John Reese is, he is reputed to be the first internet marketer to make a million dollar product launch.  He has gone on to incredible success as a consultant for other businesses.  When he says something, I listen.

The internet, and websites in particular, are a very visual medium – we make an instant assessment about a website from how it looks, even before we start reading the content.  Whilst the quality of content is critically important, so too is the packaging of your content.

When I first got into internet marketing in April 2009, graphics were a problem for me.  I was very afraid of infringing copyright and inadvertently did so.

I wrote an article on avatars and used an image from the film Avatar to illustrate my article.  It was stupid, I know but I little thought anyone would take any notice of my little website at the time.  I was offering free advice and therefore I was not really making any money from the article.

Suffice it to say that I soon received a threatening take-down email – for a while I thought I might be involved in legal action.  It was a harsh lesson that I won’t forget in a hurry.

So for a number of years, the graphics on my site were pretty uninspiring because I could not source good graphics without spending money.

In the meantime, I gradually learnt to use Macromedia Fireworks (which was bundled in with a copy of Dreamweaver that I had been given many years before) to edit images and to this day I still use this software for simple edits.

I’d heard about Photoshop but the cost of around $700 seemed too expensive and I didn’t fully understand what advantage would accrue to me by investing in it.

So for a long time I stuck with Fireworks.

What Easy Actions Does

Over the years I have bought a number of graphics packages – some of these included Photoshop Actions.  These Actions were for marketing graphics – things like e-covers and mock-ups. I was intrigued by these and managed to get hold of an old copy of Photoshop CS5.

Eventually I managed to run one of these Actions – the very first time I used it I was instantly hooked, even though I was frustrated by how complex all the tools seemed.   A simple task like importing an image seemed less than intuitive in Photoshop.

For a while my usage of Photoshop was confined to running Photoshop Actions for marketing graphics until one day I stumbled upon Actions that can create works of art out of Photographs.   These Actions have transformed my ability to create stunning graphics from quite ordinary photographs.

The power of Actions gradually led me into using Photoshop more and more for creating and editing images.  Now I am a full convert.

There are loads of free and low-cost graphical editors available today but, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had tackled Photoshop a lot earlier – in my opinion it is the one and only choice of graphics editor principally because of Actions.

These are ‘scripts’ that run automated processes on top of a photograph that can instantly transform it into a sketch, watercolour, oil painting, poster and many other stylised forms at the push of a button.

When you add in the power of Photoshop brushes and styles and some of the other powerful tools within Photoshop, nothing else comes even close to Photoshop in my experience.

I see Photoshop Actions as a great way to start using Photoshop as Actions do 95% or more of the heavy-lifting and you can get an instant result at the push of a button which encourages you to go on and learn more about manipulating and tweaking that result.

Photoshop can now be acquired for around £10 per month which makes it affordable for everyone.

My product Easy Actions is a great introduction to Photoshop Actions – once you get started, I anticipate that users will soon be ‘hooked’ by the power and scope of what they can achieve i.e. creating beautiful stylised images from ordinary photos.

How You Can Do It With Easy Actions

In Easy Actions I go into my sources of copyright free images – there are 2 or 3 principal sources.

I then show how to open an image in Photoshop, load an Action script and then run the Action.

I then demonstrate some simple edits using several different types of Action as case studies.  You can literally watch over my shoulder as I create my images.

I believe anyone will be able to do this in less than 60 minutes from start to finish.

However, you will want to then get into more advanced editing on Photoshop so I have given an optional extra of 41 videos that go through all the tools of Photoshop and how to use them.  This is a one-time-offer for those that want to go a step further.

As an additional offer, I am also offering very low-cost coaching so I can cover new Actions as they come onto the market and advanced Photoshop techniques.  I also hope to get guest contributions from cutting edge designers over time as the membership increases.

How To Get Easy Actions

I am planning to launch Easy Actions as a Warrior Special Offer via JVZoo at 3 p.m. GMT on Friday 3rd July 2015 for 7 days only on a dime-sale.

My hope is that I can work this product into my flagship offering so I can spend more time on Photoshop which is something of a passion for me.

I also want to sell my images as printables on Etsy and also to offer a ‘done-for-you’ service.  So there are plenty of options for monetising my skills and to fund ongoing investment into buying more Photoshop Actions.

So look out for the Easy Actions Launch on or around 10th July – hopefully it will take-off like a rocket.