I know right off the bat this can be a touchy subject because it's so subjective. So for this post, take everything here as nothing more than my own personal opinion. :)
When it comes to adding effects to images in photoshop, photographers have tons of different opinions. Many photographers out of either lack of "how-to" knowledge or out of principal, do very little to their images and post their images to the web or hand them over to their clients close to straight out of camera. Others rely as much on heavily image-altering photoshop actions as a Starbucks addict relies on a venti triple shot espresso to start their day.
Personally, I have nothing against photoshop actions, I use them all the time. In fact, every image I post to this blog has been touched by some sort of enhancement. The point of this post is to express (hopefully) helpful tips in how we view and use actions.
1. Don't lean too heavily on actions to define your "style". Particularly for those who are new to photography or digital, it's easy to try to use actions to take your images to the next level. Actions should be used like seasoning in cooking. You would never take a mediocre dish and attempt to make it a gourment meal by just adding salt. Or going off the term "icing on the cake", the icing is the added bonus...not the cake. :) Your style, should be primarily defined by what you do when you're clicking the shutter, not when your clicking your mouse at your computer.
When I was in college, I was a music major and did a lot of songwriting. A good mentor and friend who has a few CDs out made a really wise statement about writing songs. She told me, "If your song doesn't work with just you and a guitar, it'll never work up with a whole band." Basically, she meant that the foundation of your song needs to be strong before you start adding extra instruments. The same goes for images. They need to look good and "work" before you start doing many manipulations in photoshop.
2. That being said, actions should be used to enhance an image. Just as I said before, a cook would never make an element of seasoning the essence of a dish, however a great cook knows how to use seasoning to make an already good dish even better. How do you know how much manipulation is right? When I look at an image, I ask myself what the first thing I see or notice is. The image? Or the effect? Is it the moment, event, person, or thing in the image that my eye goes to first or is it the super saturatated colors, and crazy blurr? This is of course subjective in how you evaluate it, but your eye hopefully is going to the essence of the image, not the post production.
3. Make your own actions and don't rely too much on packaged actions that you get off the web. If you're new to photoshop, it's difficult to know where to start in making your own actions and that's where things like Kevin Kubota's Action Sets or Brody Dezember's Actions or even the great actions that come with ShowIT Effects really help. Ultimately though, your goal should be to learn photoshop so well that you can craft your own actions- these will differenciate you and your style from the literally hundreds and thousands of photogs that purchase other action sets.
4. Most actions require some customization. Regardless of whether you're using your own actions or actions purchased off the web, make sure that you adjust the layers in the action to fit the image. Do this by adjusting the opacity of each layer. As you get to know the actions you use all the time, you'll find yourself knowing before you even apply the action what layers you'll need to adjust and the process goes pretty quickly. Make necessary changes particularly to curve layers that might blow out highlights.
Remember what I said at the start: all of this is my own personal opinon, there is no universal right or wrong when it comes to these things. All this is subjective to your own taste, particularly in the area of determining where your eye hits first...the image or the effect.
Here are a few examples of "before and after" for how I've used actions to enhance images. The before images are straight out of camera with very minor exposure adjustments:
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
I'd love to hear your thoughts (and questions) in the comments section! :)
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