I got to noodling around again with some of the actions I've got loaded into my copy of Photoshop Elements, and arrived at an interesting multi-effect in just four steps.

I started with the image to the left, and ran my "Another Soft Image" action on it, which killed some of the harsh contrast and softened things up a bit (to the right):

This action also softens the image a bit, giving a slightly dreamy effect that can be emphasised or minimized once the action completes. Later steps will emphasize it a bit (that's a good thing!) but you might want to play around with the layers' opacities on your image before moving on to the next few steps.

Next, I ran the "Faded Print" action to dull some of the remaining bright colors and give a subtle faded look to the image, left. It creates a nice blue-ish tone, and gives images a faded Polaroid look - similar to a snapshot from days gone by. It also adds a small white border around the entire image.

Next up was my "Overlay Diffusion" action (to the right), which uses another method to soften an image (can you tell I was going for a very soft, faded, dreamy effect for this image?!). Some of the color that was diluted by the Faded Print & another Soft Image actions is slightly restored and boosted - you can see the red bricks and yellow trim areas have a bit more "oomph".

The final touch was to open Glam Photo 3 and run the Old Romance action. It fades (yet again) the colors, adds just a bit of noise and creates a frame around the image. Combined with the small white frame added by the Faded Print action earlier, a nice triple-outline effect is achieved.

Experiment with the actions, and try different combinations to get truly interesting and eye-catching images.

Got any comments? I'd love to hear what you think. Post your experiments with various effects in the Photoshop Elements Techniques Flickr group, and list the steps you took to get there.