A few things; First, I just updated all my galleries with fresh photos. You can view them all right here on the blog – under “Portfolio”.
AND, I have a great little action to share. I’ve been researching how to make actions, what are the best methods, etc., and I think I’ve made a sweet little action. This action does a lot – tonal curves, selective desaturation, contrast adjustment, high pass sharpen, and a few others. It’s that perfect action that I have gone to time and time again. It can take a good photograph and turn it into something really special. I especially love how it evens out and gives warmth to skin tones. It’s called “Baked”, because after it’s applied, it has that vintage, warm feel of a photo that has been baked in the sun. Here are a few examples…
Photo on the left was the original exposure, nothing was done other than crop. The photo on the right was “baked” at 75% opacity, plus a vignette.
Original exposure was a tad dark, so this was lightened with levels (It’s important to start with a well exposed photo, not too light or dark). Look what it does to jeans! Baked at 80% plus a skin smooth and vignette.
Any newborn photographer will tell you it’s sometimes hard to get that newborn skin color right. This little action takes that red out and leaves creamy newborn skin. Baked applied at about 35%. No other skin smoothing!
Click this link to download:
To install, unzip the file. Open Photoshop. In your actions palette, click on the little arrow in the corner of the palette. Scroll down to “Load Actions”. Choose the file (should be an .atn file) and you’re all set! I run this with Photoshop CS4. I can’t guarantee it will work with other versions. Enjoy! And if you like it, please leave a comment with a link to some of your photos!
OH…MY…GOSH! I could literally just reach through the screen and KISS YOU! I have been almost in TEARS over this newborn shoot I did. I am a new photographer and feel like my skills are fairly good with all other types of photography, but I have never done a newborn shoot before. Baby was VERY red and blotchy, and I have tried EVERYTHING. I got some MCP actions to help with it and also tried some other manual tutorials myself. MCP made the baby look almost dead (sorry)…even when done at a very low opacity and building carefully. And the other manual tutorials…skin color was just off, and the baby looked like a plastic doll. Whatever this is…you are a GENIUS. I cannot thank you enough…I literally love you. You just have NO IDEA what you have just done for me…saved me $95 as I was about to purchase some Paint the Moon actions to try to fix it, but something just told me it wasn’t going to be much better than MCP for skin. You should sell this…it is fabulous! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! You are a complete genius, and the creator of MCP has NOTHING on you!
I feel the need to comment again……………….I LOVE YOU! LOL! Thank you SO much.
Oh my!! You are very welcome. I’m so glad it helped you. I know how it is with that hard to fix red baby skin!
OMG…ditto exactly what Lauren said! Was ready to buy yet another action set but not even sure it would do what I need it to (get rid of a red baby) and found your site. Worked like a charm! Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU so much for this free download! It was just what I was looking for. I appreciate your generosity!
You are so welcome! So glad it’s useful for you :)
Thank you for sharing Amy, i can’t wait to try it. I’ve been wondering for a long time now what it is that gives professional photos that smooth soft look. I thought maybe it was a certain type of lens… after reading all the other comments, it will turn out wonderful.
Cheers x
You are very welcome! I hope it is helpful to you :)
Thanks so much! I can’t wait to try this also!!~!
Hi Amy, just want to say thanks for sharing this action. It is awesome. I just did my first newborn shoot and this action gave me fantastic results and saved me tons of time.