Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Photoshop Actions

My sneaks + PW actions

About a week ago I started playing with Pioneer Woman's Photoshop Actions on some of my excessively boring pics. :) By the way, isn't she amazing? She's hilarious, she can cook, she takes a mean photograph, and Photoshops like nobody's business. If I was doing all that and had children, you can bet those kids would look like they'd been raised by wolves. She constantly inspires me.


Here's the original bore-fest:


sneaks

Maybe photographs are subject to the photographer's mood (just like any other artistic creation)? Because lots of my pics seem to have the blahs lately. :)


I made black and white versions of my recent night pics (again using PW Photoshop Actions):
black and white



I'm sort of a fan.... I like the extra drama of the black and white, and how it simplifies photos into a very dramatic conversation of lights and darks and shadows... What do you think? :) Has anyone tried out Actions before? I'm gonna warn you though, I can give you zero technical assistance on them, I barely understand how I got them to work, myself. :)

10 comments:

Jenni said...

I can tell you one thing, you've definitely added a lot more interest to the photographs. With photoshop you have to be careful to not go over the top when adding extra touches. You don't want the photo to show that it's been really worked on and it looks unnatural/not like the actual subject.

From my all of the photography classes I've taken, my professors say get it right in the camera first so then you don't have to do so much on the computer.

The city night shots look really nice in black and white, but if I were you I would bump up the contrast a bit. You want your whites to be white, not washed out grey.

LollyChops said...

I totally love her actions too! I check her site every single day! She's the best!

Nice pics btw!!!

Bethany said...

I've not tried it, but this is oh so inspiring. It may just revolutionize my pics! (That is if I actually follow through with the inspiration...)

Ondine said...

Wonderful!! I love those.

I don't have photoshop, just Gimp (a freebie equivalent) so I've been trying to work out how to do this sort of thing in that...so far - in vain!

mjb said...

Neat to see these used! They're on my list of things to try someday. But I get stuck everytime I try to do something new in photoshop, so I haven't tried yet.

Alli (One Pearl Button) said...

I love those black and whites! Really nice. I use Gimp, but I do apply actions, sometimes (Ondine, there are Gimp actions - they are called "scripts" - but not nearly as many as there are for Photoshop, sadly). I think the actions really work for these photos!

Scoops said...

I too have been experimenting with these actions, aren't they awesome. Love the seventies one.

Ondine said...

Alli- thank you, thank you! I'm off to investigate...

floresita said...

Cool - I'd love to see what you guys have done with actions - please feel free to leave a link! :)

And thanks J.Loo! I really stumble about when it comes to editing pics, your comments are really helpful!

Alli (One Pearl Button) said...

You're welcome, Ondine! Gimp has a nice vintage-look script that I like to play with (just google "Gimp script vintage look" to find it). You can see it on a couple of my photos here - http://www.onepearlbutton.com/2009/09/first-day-of-autumn.html. There's also a nice script set from FX-Foundary that I use quite a bit for cleaning things up. I recommend it!