Tips for Actions by Miss April: Rhonda Palmer

Digital Scrapbooking Tutorial by
Miss April, Rhonda Palmer
Everyday Digital Creative Team Guest Member

Using Actions to Pop The Colors In Your Pictures

Do you wish you could be a professional photographer but can’t afford all the expensive equipment to become one? I have a solution for you, actions. Actions are presents in Photoshop that can give your pictures the edge they need to pop. There are many styles to choose from to fit any person’s style. I found a lot of them for free by going to google and typing in “Photoshop Actions.” Many digital designers are coming out with their own actions. For my article I am using actions made by Holly McCraig.

Holly McCraig’s actions are easy to use. You simple follow the steps it tells you and your pictures will turn out amazing. What is great about actions is that you can use them to really make your photos dance. As you are working with the actions you can notice how your picture starts to change. It is rather exciting actually. You won’t know what it will turn out like till your last step of the process. There are simple actions that are a few steps. Then there are more intense actions that will take many steps. I have seen one that took over 20 steps. I got a bit impatience and decided to go to another one.

For my flower photo I used Holly’s Purty Pics Warm Color action.

You can see that the photo is dark. I must not have used a flash when I took this. I want to brighten it up. When I used Holly’s Purty Pics Warm Color action (see photo below) see what a different it makes. See how it brightens it up. The flower has more dimension to it. The background color has changed. It really made a huge different by using this action.

For my couple photo I used Holly’s All That Pops Action. Here is the "Before" shot. This photo is nice. It is a little light. It feels as if it needs a little something to make it shimmer.

Using this action gave me this result:
Notice the color. See how the tree stands out more and there is somewhat of a glow around it? Everything is brighter and a bit off focus to give it the feel that it needs to accommodate the photo.

For the sunset photo I used Holly’s Purty Pics Basic Black and White. Step out
of the box when you want to change a photo to black and white. Black and white
photos don’t have to be just people. Give your photos a bit of mystery by
using black and white. Here is a normal sunset:




If you want people’s mind to wander, turn this photo into black and white.

Now people can image what it was like that day. What color were the houses.
What shades of blue, white and black were out that day. Make them think. Make
them get lost for a moment in your photograph.

If you want people to think you are an amazing photographer you must get into
using actions. You can use any photo from any camera and make your pictures
look like they were taken professionally. Here are a few sites that I
recommend trying out actions for free so you can play around with them and get
use to using them. But I must warn you, actions are addicting!

http://www.atncentral.com/

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tools/actions.html

http://www.panosfx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=4&id=13&Itemid=27

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