How to Make a Photo Effect Photoshop Action for Portraits Step 1 Open your photo. It should be about 2500 px wide. Create a New Layer and name it Mask. Step 2 Use a soft brush to paint the area that you want to be modified by the action. In portrait actions like this, we usually want to select the person to cut the image out from the background. Step 3 Make sure that the first layer is called Back