June 4, 2007
-
hey Partner…what are your thoughts on Photoshop Actions?
Personally I Love the ease of so many of the action sets that are available to us as professionals. They have saved me hundreds of hours of time while retouching and creating my images. From the ordinary to the extraordinary our photographs become a work of art. There are some that teach seminars and hold class on selling you their way of creating actions, but thats a lot to remember. My favorite sets of actions are from Kevin Kubota out of Oregon. His stuff is as easy as a click of a button and wha-la! Its like using a microwave oven, it works fast and its done fast…on to the next one please.
Let me know what you use and like, I would love to get some reactions.
Randy
Comments (2)
looks GREAT. i’m all for actions
Are you talking about that “Totally Rad Actions” guy? His actions look pretty neat.
Personally however, I find that Lightroom or Bridge CS3 is replacing a lot of the work that I used to do with actions. I can save presets in LR / BR, and apply them even more instantly than actions. For basic tone and color enhancement, presets are beginning to put actions out of business for me. I used to have over 100 actions for doing slight, common adjustments to color and tone. Bumping up the shadows, bumping up the saturation, applying a little soft focus, etc. etc. Then I got Scott’s actions which basically “consolidated” those 100 actions into about twenty-something, while also adding a bunch of new tools. Now I use Bridge in CS3, and I have a good number of presets to help me with things like contrast / tone control, color correction & enhancement, and a few COMPLETE processing foundations such as “vintage” B&W film or color film processing looks, etc. etc.
Of course presets and actions can only be a foundation upon which I fine-tune my processing style for individual photos. Each photo is different and just processing them all the same way like a robot will not get me very far!
And even more obvious is the hard truth that no action or preset can turn a bad photo into a stunning photo. An image has to have potential in the first place. But that’s something every experienced photographer knows, of course.
Lastly, as someone who loves to learn new things AND teach others what I’ve learned, I agree with you- learning “workshop style” is tough! That’s why I think that if I ever got into teaching photography, it would be one-on-one, mentoring style teaching. Getting together more than once is key I believe, and that’s what I would do- teach over a period of time. That’s why I love SR’s un-written policy on 1-day workshops- students can “audit” (drop in on) future classes…
Wow I’m tired! I just assisted my friend shoot an ad for an energy drink company called “Radioactive Energy” lol. Will post about it later, but for now, SLEEP!
Take care,
-Matt-