Finally!!! Actions for my PSE5!!! (And the Instructions so You can do it Too!)

Last night I went over to my friend (and fellow photographer - you can find her here: http://sandmphotos.blogspot.com/) ) Shoshannah's house where she has so graciously been teaching me things about photoshop and my camera!  She told me earlier in the day that she thought we had missed a step before in downloading actions to my PSE5 and she wanted to give it one more shot before we both threw in the towel and decided that my Dell 2005 computer was totally irredeemable!

So, after downloading a few free textures from http://www.mcpactions.com/ and http://www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/ we began the process of getting them to work in PSE5.  I don't think I have to tell you how elated we both were when I re-opened my Photoshop and BAM!  The installation bar popped up and we knew we had ACTIONS!!!!!  It was a great moment. =)

If you're having trouble downloading actions into PSE5, here is what we did, step by step.  I hope it helps and that if / when it works, you get that same, elated feeling that we got.  Then, you get to play with them which really is the best part of it all!

How to Properly Install Actions into Photoshop Elements 5 on Windows XP

*Note, you must first have some actions downloaded before saving them in this location to use!!

1- Go to "My Computer"

2- Go to "C Drive"

3- Go to "Documents and Settings"

4- Go to "All Users"

5- Go to "Application Data"

6- Go to "Adobe"

7- Go to "Photoshop"

8- Go to "5.0"

9- Go to "Photo Creations"

10- Go to "Special Effects"

11- Go to "Photo Effects"

12- Now, paste the action folders you have downloaded into this file

13 - Go back to the "5.0" folder

14- There will be a whited out icon that says something like "mediadata.dp3". 

15- Hit the all caps key and behind the word media (or the last word of the file before the period), type "OLD" in all caps.

16 - Close out of all that

17 - Go to your PSE5 and re-open

18- If this was done properly, an installation progress box should come up saying something like, "rebuilding"

19- Once this is finished, go to the toolbar on the right under Special Effects

20 - Choose Photo Filters - All

21- Voila!!! You should see your installed actions!!!!!

If you try this and have any problems, please let me know and I will try to assist you in getting this setup.  I know how frustrating it was for me and I'm glad that I had someone like Shoshannah to help me make it happen!!!

Thanks Shoshannah!!!

Sara