Facebook: Send for $1Last week, someone posted a question on PhotoshopForums.com. They had purchased a Photoshop action, which is a file that tells Photoshop how to do something, allowing it to perform that action on multiple files repeatedly. They work for a government agency and had used this action on approximately 70 images for their employer.

Unfortunately, they recently had some computer issues and, due to that, the action was gone. The company who sold it to them was also gone and had stopped selling actions. The person joined the community to ask for help finding the action. If they couldn’t find it, they would have to redo those 70 images – probably in addition to a few new ones – and it would create a bunch of work.

Can I Help?

I saw this and immediately went to Google to see what I could find. Unfortunately, I did not find anything. I found an example of what they looked like, so I asked the community to help.

However, with some more digging, I was able to find the person who ran the website that had created and sold the actions. They had a Facebook profile. At first, I made a post with a link to the profile, suggesting that they contact the creator of the site and see if they could help. But then I realized: why don’t I just do that myself? And so I did.

$1

By default, when you contract a stranger on Facebook, your message will go to their “Other” box. This means that there is a good chance they won’t see it because you aren’t notified when a message goes to your Other box. However, Facebook also offered a solution. You can pay $1 to verify you are not a spammer and the message will go directly to their Inbox. So I did that. I sent this message:

Hello Ms. McKissen,

I apologize for this super random message. I manage PhotoshopForums.com and we had a person post saying that they were “desperate” to find the Atomic Cupcake Bronze Action. They work for the government, had purchased it and used it to create a series of portraits.

They recently had some computer issues and lost the action. If they can’t find it, they’ll have to redo 70 portraits as they need to have them all the same.

You can view the thread here: http://www.photoshopforums.com/desperate-for-atomic-cupcake-bronze-action-vt29160.html

I wanted to help them, so I did a little Googling, found you and paid Facebook $1 to confirm this isn’t spam, so it will hopefully reach you. I was hoping you might still have that action, which you could make available.

I appreciate your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Patrick

It Worked

On a Saturday, the creator responded within the hour, joined the forums and posted two actions as an attachment for people to download. The person who originally posted the question returned after the weekend and you can see the response on the forums. It couldn’t have gone better.

It would have been easy to just stop at the first reply. Or I could have just suggested that he contact the creator, but by investing a few extra minutes and $1, I was able to deliver an extremely positive result for a community member and for anyone who looks for that Photoshop action in the future.

That’s $1 well spent.