Action!

I recently loaded Photoshop CS4 on my Mac, and I love tweaking pictures to my heart's content. Though I am a lowly beginner, I have discovered "actions" -- what they are, where I can get them, how to load them and how to use them. For the impatient creative who is learning how to use a new tool, it can be frustrating to fumble around a monster like CS4 to figure out all the steps you need to take to get your pictures from ordinary to amazing.  But with actions you have a magic button, and when you press it it's like PS waves a starry fairy dust wand and magically transforms it into something pretty cool -- and sometimes totally awesome, if all the stars align and the perfect match between great shot and great action is found.

In this instance, well, I guess it's pretty cool. 

This is a picture I took of Wade last fall when we walked through Big Trees in Northern California. Believe it or not, he is standing inside the base of a tree that had fallen over. I really like the composition, the light, and the scale of him compared to the tree.

I took three of Pioneer Woman's actions and applied them to the picture.

Take a look at the difference between them.

This is the uncropped original.

I chopped off a bit of the right. Then I added the "fresh & colorful" action. See how the red in the tree and the green has more pop.

Here I ran the "B&W Beauty" action.

And on this one I used the "Seventies" action.

With each I sharpened it up a bit and adjusted the contrast.  

As I get to know PS better I'll start creating my own actions.  But for now, it's a wonderful thing to have a magic button that figures it out for me.