This is so totally a pet peeve of mine. I’ve been all nicey nice about it because it can be a hot topic – but for the love of all that is holy, learn to take a decent photo before you start with all the Photoshop actions. Better, yet, just skip the Photoshop actions.
And if you’re being all snooty because you don’t use Photoshop action, but you DO use the www online photo editing site that shall not be named, go sit in the corner. And grab that cone shaped hat off my desk.
I have plenty of actions that I have written myself, but they’re mostly utilitarian in nature, like resizing or adding a copyright notice, things of that nature. I do use 2 plugins; one is Portraiture, which I use for every single retouch I do and the other is Topaz Effects, which can be totally overused if not used with care.
What happened to good, clean photography?
Turning everything blue in a photo or adding those weird vintagey effects just makes it look like you yanked the photo out of a shoebox that’s been stuck in a hot attic for 20 years. Seriously? With the technology available to us now, we’re going to make all of our photos look like they’re 40 years old? Alrighty then.
It drives me absolutely batty to see these types of photos over and over again on Facebook with tons of ooh and aah comments underneath them, when in reality, there is no photographic excellence being exhibited. We are being distracted with the ooh shiny special photoshop effects that have been added to it.
If perhaps a special photograph of a series was selected to do this special effect to, it might be different. But sadly, that is not the case. Entire sessions are treated with multiple special effects.
We have become monkeys pushing a button.
And while we’re at it – if you want to use a special effect action – learn what all of the steps in the action do. Adjust the steps to suit your unique situation.
A few months ago, late at night, I was perusing a forum and saw a plea for help from one of my very local competitors. The photos they were sending to the lab were being rejected because their were not the correct number of pixels to print the enlargement they ordered.
After some preliminary information was exchanged, I realized that the photographer was running an action that had a step programmed to resize it for web/email use. I could only shake my head. How many other photogs out there are just pushing a button with no clue of what is going on, but just love the results? Start going through your actions step by step. Know where the saturation step is so you can go in and adjust that when your client’s skin turns orange.
Someone I know has a saying.
I’m not being all protective of their identity, I honestly can’t recall who it is at the moment. I’m old. And I haven’t had any coffee yet. Give me a break.
Anyway, that saying is: You can’t polish a turd. Think about it.
I’d like to challenge you all to lay off the special effects. For a week. Get back to the basics. Use Photoshop only to white balance, crop and do layer adjustments. Learn Photoshop from the ground up – the way it was intended. I’d be interested in knowing how many users out there just jumped straight into using actions and plugins and never bothered with the basics.
That’s some expensive glitter.
I say it time and time again – photoshop and I are not friends 🙂 It is a great tool, for things like curves adjustments, sharpening, dodging, burning and cropping, and that is pretty much all I use it for except for my B&W action that I wrote myself a few years back. Don't even get me started on portraiture plug-ins and making clients look like plastic barbie dolls ;).
I use Portraiture, but the key is to apply it to a duplicate layer, make it a mask, mask out the areas that don't need Portraiture and then lower the opacity of that masked layer until you get the look you want. I never have it set for over 50% opacity on women and it's usually under 25% for men.
Christine Wootness Walsh-Newton I don't even own the plug-in, how is THAT for keepin' it real? 😉
Heather Rivlin If it works for you – go for it. I have to use it or something similar because I do a lot of pageant work.
I only do necessary adjustments and don't use actuisn right now. I'm not planning on doing alot to my photos. I hate when people just shoot & say 'oh I'll fix it later!' How about shooting the photo correct the 1st time?
*proudly wearing dunce cap in time out*. 😉
I was thinking the same thing. Maybe I am just out of touch of what people want? Then it hit me, if I were to look at the picture it was a snap shot to look like that out of focus. I was at a workshop and won some presets for photoshop and that was what was happening but I knew when I looked at the file information that the file was way to small for what I wanted, had to go through the actions to see where the size setting was. not to hard. but hours of editing later. Good lesson. So much in photoshop that still learning, Basic stuff too.
Actually, you can polish a turd…they did it on Mythbusters. 🙂 Great article though.