Welcome to the Wow! Actions set (©1997 Jack Davis & Linnea Dayton). These Actions are designed to be used in conjunction with The Photoshop 4 Wow! Book and Adobe Photoshop 4.0.1. The Wow! Actions are for the purchasers of The Photoshop 4 Wow! Book. Please don't sell or give them to others. Free sample Wow! Actions are available at www.peachpit.com/wow. There are more Actions in the Wow! Actions set than are shown in the book's Actions Index or on the Wow! Actions poster that comes with the book. We hope you enjoy them all!

To use the Wow! Actions as tutorials that produce the results on the poster or in the book's Actions Index, use the PhotoDisc Demo Images files and run the Actions with our default settings. The Stops in the Wow! Actions provide important directions for running the Actions. The Actions won't act as "friendly" if you don't read the Stop messages.
In addition, some of the Wow! Actions call for Lighting Effects settings that you must load from the Wow! CD-ROM into the folder/directory where Photoshop keeps its Lighting Styles.


The Wow! Actions' default settings are for images 500 pixels high. If you use your own images and they vary from that size, you'll need to change the settings for the steps that follow the Stops. 

These tutorial Wow! Actions are provided "as is," with no implied liability and no implied responsibility for technical support on the part of the authors or Peachpit Press.


When using the Actions with your own files, always save the file before running the Action, so you can Revert if you make a mistake or if you don't like the final effect.

You can run the Actions in Button mode or List mode. With the Action in List mode and expanded, you can see what happens as it runs. And if it stops because you've made a mistake, start over by Reverting the file and clicking the Action's name again. But in List mode you risk an accidental change - by clicking in the check mark or dialog icon column. Button mode protects you from accidentally turning on or off steps and dialog boxes that could keep the Actions from running correctly. If you make a mistake in Button mode and want to start over, Revert the file, then click the "Button Mode Reset" button, and then click the button for your Action again. You can learn more about how Actions work - and how they can get unintentionally altered - by reading "Automating with Actions" in Chapter 1 of The Photoshop 4 Wow! Book. 

If you accidentally change the Wow! Actions, you can restore them by loading them from the Wow! CD-ROM using Load Actions or Replace Actions from the Actions palette's pop-out menu. 

If you run an Action with the default settings on its PhotoDisc demo image and it doesn't produce the expected results, choose File, Revert and try again. If this doesn't work, reload the Actions set.