Photoshop Actions

I bought some PS Actions that Maggie Holmes developed. They are just so fantastic to use, saving me heaps of time editing photos (I have tons of them waiting to be scrapped:) You all know how painstaking and fiddly it could get trying to get those hard to part with underexposed but otherwise great snapshots to look better. I don't consider myself a pro when it comes to taking photographs but I like playing with editing and often find it very tedious and time-consuming getting the desired effect, so when I stumbled upon the link to Maggie's website during one of my blog-hopping sessions I knew I found an instant solution to this task. Thanks Maggie for your fantastic contribution and for unselfishly sharing your skills. Please check out her blog...she's got some really awesome everyday shoots in there - really inspirational. Her Action sets are well reasonably priced too. I've only had a chance to use the one I bought yesterday before abandoning my desktop for mundane duties for a while. Now that I've the chance to play again I want to share a couple of photos I fiddled with earlier...

Here's a shot of Jarel, my youngest son, which I took last week using my good old Canon PowerShot A 570 when we went for a short trip in downtown Oslo. Jarel was sitting along the edge of a fountain cooling off his feet as the heat was nearing 30°c. Note the subtle difference between the images after all four different actions have been applied.

This was the original photo

Then I used Simple Color Boost

Here I had a go at Color Pop, note the dramatic change in colors

And here's the result after I applied Extreme Color. Just look at those rich colors...yumm.

Lastly I toned the image down a bit using Lighten Up action.

Of course it's not necessary to use all four actions, I did this just to illustrate how each action differ from one another. Here I liked the effect of Extreme Color best but in other cases even just a Simple Color Boost would do. It all really depends on your desired result as some photos don't require much changes. And of course one can also go a step further as one desires. Yes I didn't stop there...when I became satisfied with the colors I then turned the tone into sepia...and I just loved the outcome.