Having Fun with Actions

If you are going to use actions on your photographs, it is important to remember that you can mix and match them and have a lot of fun trying out different combinations! You don't just have to run one action on an image and then be done. You can run two or three or even more actions on the same image if you want. There are so many different effects you can get depending on which actions you run and also which order you run them in.

I chose two pictures that I took of my little sweetheart recently and I just played around with all three sets of my actions to show you how many different looks you can really get! And I could have kept going... this isn't it!

And the thing that is exciting to me is that there is no right or wrong here! Each of these images is a little (or a lot) different than the others and yet I like them all. As a sidenote: There are definitely times when I will run an action on a certain image and I will not like the results. This can be due to the lighting or the coloring in the original photograph and the way the action is processing it. So you do have to remember that not all actions will work on all photographs, especially the ones that have a more extreme effect. Actions like my simple color boost, on the other hand, are made to give you a nice subtle pop of color, without changing the tone of the image much, if at all. These types of actions typically will work on every photograph and can easily be used as part of your every-day workflow.

That wraps up my installment of photoshop action tips for the week. I hope that you had fun learning more about actions and the different ways you can mix and match them! Please feel free to email me if you have any more questions about my actions. I am always more than happy to help!