Photoshoping made easy

Being a designer, I need to work with Photoshop (sometimes). Now, I’m no pro, but I thought I could go a good job of color correcting pictures. When we hired our wedding photographer, I didn’t want them to do any color corrections because I could do it myself (and save extra $$$ at the same time) little did I know it isn’t as easy as it seems. I wanted pictures like I’ve seen on various wedding photographer sites, but all my corrections looked nothing like what they have.

At the beginning of the week one of my fellow bees (Lemon) introduced me to Totally Rad Photoshop Actions. Now for the ones who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, actions at recorded steps in this case to improve/color correct you photos. They are extremely easy to use - you literally just click on the play button.

Here is a picture from my after wedding photo shoot, that I absolutely love. I attempted to edit it, using one of their sample action called Super fun happy:

Before:After:

As you can see, it really add that dramatic effect. I played with it a little...so I did more than just click on the play button, but still I think the outcome is perfect... almost as though I was a professional color corrector ;)

If you visit their website you can see tonnes of before and after shots. That way you get a glimpse of all the possibilities. Here are other before and after pictures… see the difference. Its stunning and adds that WOW factor.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

If you have Photoshop (CS2 or higher) and would like to experiment with these awesome actions, visit their website to receive their samples. But if you want to plunge in the world of hours and hours of fun and easy editing, I would suggest you purchase their action kit. (but you really need to do lots of photo correcting for it to be worth it)

Plus, Totally Rad recently won the Bludomain Actions Of The Year contest, and to celebrate they are putting all their awesome tools on sale through midnight 8/3/08. Save up to $25. How awesome is that!

Will you be attempting to color correct your own photos? What tools will you be using?

Image source: Totally Rad