We consider optically injected charge and spin currents in semiconductor quantum wells. The injection can be done by quantum optics techniques with the interference of the one- and two-photon transition processes, by intersubband light absorption, and by a stimulated Raman process. The final state with the injected currents strongly depends on the injection process, producing the system very strongly out of the equilibrium for the interband transitions and relatively weakly out of the equilibrium for the Raman process. In addition to the directly injected, the resulting spin currents can arise due to the spin-dependent scattering of electrons by excited holes. The resulting patterns of charge and spin densities will be analyzed. We show that the charge current evolution can have a universal character, independent on the system details.