It's free, but ...

On Monday, I wrote about Ski's article on reducing JPEG artifacts. As a follow up, I went to the Foray web site and downloaded their free ForayJPGArtifactReductionTool. It's a saved action file that you can load into Photoshop that automates the steps outlined in Ski's article.

When I loaded the action file, I noticed a few things about the steps that I want to share with you.

• All of the work is done to the Background layer. Can you articulate why this is a bad idea?
• The image is resized. Can you articulate why?
• Since all the work is done to the Background layer, how are you controlling the complimentary color artifacts that result from Unsharp Mask? I would have expected that the script would create a copy of the layer and changed the blending mode, or worked in LAB mode and just worked on the L channel.
• You already know how I feel about Auto Adjustments. 

I would have hoped that the Layers Panel looked something like this when the action was completed.

Sadly, it wasn't.

So, caveat emptor. Just because it's free doesn't mean you should use it.