Photoshop Actions - By Popular Demand

Just got an email because I promised I’d point someone at some Photoshop Actions but haven’t gotten around to sorting it out yet, so, here it is. Photoshop Actions are essentially a way to automate processes in photoshop, the most common reasons for wanting to do this are speed, simplicity or regularity. If you’re applying the same actions to images day after day as a part of your workflow, it makes sense to automate the task, and if you’re using it really frequently assign the action to a key combination.

A great place to start, and a great place to find some “free” photoshop actions is at ActionCentral - The Photoshop Action Exchange which is a fantastic site but can be a little bewildering at the sheer numbers of actions available. Be aware that there are many crap actions mixed in with the gems that can be found, and I can’t even begin to say which actions are great for other peoples workflow. But take a while to look around and be selective, a few well chosen actions that are easy to access are far better than a thousand rubbish actions that confuse. Take a few seconds to look at one of my favourites “Kent’s B&W Selective Color 4.0” which is a fantastic B&W converter.  There are some great tutorials on the site too
It’s also worth taking time, once you’ve found a good set of actions to take some time picking them apart, and really understanding what goes on behind that magical click of the mouse, it’ll help you understand photoshop in a far better way than simply relying on others.

Lastly, for the Apple users amongst you, there is another site called “Complete Digital Photography” run by a guy called Ben Long, he goes to a great deal of effort combining photoshop actions along with Apple’s OS X Automater, to produce so truely fantastic workflow management options. The actual Photoshop Action Pack can be found here, which is currently at version 3.0 at the time of this post.

Both of the sites rely on donations, so if you’re making money from your work and use these sites or their actions on a regular basis, please take some time to recognise these guys for their hard work and knowledge, give em a donation, which will help to ensure that their fantastic work continues. There ends my sermon!

Adobe Lightroom Beta 4 Released

OK, this isn’t really new news, since it’s been around for nearly a week now, but for those of you that weren’t aware, Adobe has released the latest beta of this wonderful software. Now if you don’t already have a DAM (Digital Asset Management) soution, you could do worse than to check this out. Additionally it allows you to work on RAW files in a similar way to Photoshop RAW, but in a non destructive way. Interface looks cool and the program is pretty quick.

If you don’t already have a solution give it a whirl.

PhotoshopTV - Episode 50

Photoshop TV has been updated (October 9th) this weeks show is about 45 minutes, and topics include:

• Various Methods of increasing brightness and contrast using curves adjustments and layer masks on areas you wish to draw the eye to (very useful if you’re a working photographer and don’t already use this
• How to create a photo monatage using a bunch (60 -112) photographs to create a 20 x 30 poster.
• Getting rid of colour casts when shooting under artificial (or studio) lighting by using Whibal white balance cards.

Don’t forget these shows are only available for 1 week, until the new episode is released, after that they’ll cost you $2 from the shows online store.

A Friend in Need

I have several friends / acquaintances / colleagues, who regularly get emails from me about new worthwhile resources I find related to photography, and I figured rather than send out a bunch of emails regularly, as I find these useful links and resources I’d update the blog. These posts will included weekly updates of shows and podcasts, and give an idea of what’s useful within them.

This will also give me the opportunity to post stuff a little more often

Watch this Space