Thursday, January 20, 2011

Freebie Photo Pop Action

So, I obviously take...oh, about a million or so photos a year.  Of those, maybe a tenth make it to my computer screen and a teensy-weensy fraction of those make it onto a CD to be saved.  The point is, I edit A L O T of photos. A few need special work, but I do the same flipping things to most of them...over and over and over.  I have fancy actions I've downloaded to pop, sharpen, and defog...but I end up doing it myself most of the time.

Okay, now here's the kicker...I scrap in Photoshop Elements...so I can't make my own action to automate the process.  I know, right? Bummer!

For this reason (and about twenty others) I got Photoshop...I'm still gonna do most of my mojo in PSE, but some stuff just needs the real thing!

Here's my first action.  It automates my standard photo prep that I do on every single pic: It saturates the color a wee bit (I have the opacity of the color pop layer turned down for pics of people, which is what most of mine are.  I dial it up to 50% or so for landscapes and my dog, LoL!  You can adjust it as you please.)  It also has several levels of sharpen.  They're all turned off, you just pick which one works best for your pic and flatten.  I often add a vignette, but I didn't include it because I don't use it all the time.

So there ya go. If you don't know how to install actions, check out these instructions on the Coffeeshop Blog (Rita makes the best and most useful actions around, so check those out, too.  Her perfect portrait action ROCKS.  I also love her vignette action. Oh, and she has an action to let PSE users add layer masks to any layer, too.  I use that one a lot. And they're FREE. Who doesn't love that?)

3 comments:

  1. Thank you so much! Can't wait to try it!

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  2. Thank you for making my weekend such an enjoyable one! I have spent the weekend surfing the web and I found your website and had fun downloading some of your freebies. Thank you for the goodies that you have shared! I appreciate your generosity! Without your willingness to share your talents and your layouts, there would be very little external stimuli to make us stop, look and think and that process makes us more creative!

    I have downloaded a lot of wonderful kits in the past few months and didn't really understand how important Thank Yous are so I’m trying to be sure to stop and take the time to post a thank you. Sometimes life gets in the way and you start a download and walk away and when you sit down, you start at the next step and don’t loop back around for that thank you to the artist that had shared so generously with you. I know that it happens a lot with me with dial-up. Sometimes those big files take FOREVER to download and then I forget what I was doing! That happens a lot lately…. ! :-)

    A heartfelt Thank You for you!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

    Patti in Dallas, Texas, USA

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  3. Wow, thanks, Patti. Those are very nice words. :)

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