A Cowboy's Wife » adobe photoshop http://acowboyswife.com Family, Photography, and Finds from a Professional Texas Mom Blogger Tue, 22 May 2012 19:07:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 1000+ Photoshop Actions, Plugins, Presets, Tutorials and Brushes http://acowboyswife.com/1000-photoshop-actions-plugins-presets-tutorials-and-brushes/ http://acowboyswife.com/1000-photoshop-actions-plugins-presets-tutorials-and-brushes/#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:00:34 +0000 A Cowboy's Wife http://acowboyswife.com/?p=2597 As many of you know, photography is a passion of mine and lately, I’m craving it more and more. While I’m not a huge fan of overly processed photos, at least not on every single photo, I do like to pick some favorites and play with them in Adobe Photoshop. I thought it would be fun to share with you, some of the places I get my actions from. It’s very easy to get caught up in actions because they can totally change the look of your photo, most times for the best but in my opinion, the shot you take straight out of the camera, is the one that really counts. That shows what kind of photographer you are. Anyone can use actions but it’s skill and sometimes sheer luck to get a great photo.

I included all sorts of actions, text actions, and tutorials. Have fun with it!

COFFEESHOP

My new favorite place is CoffeeShop. Tons of great actions for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. She even has things for Lightroom. It’s a place you’ll spend hours at so prepare yourself with coffee and snacks, get a babysitter, and enjoy!  Also, these are all free and she works on donations. I recommend a donation no matter how small (or big) because these folks put a lot of time into creating these so that you don’t have to.

PIONEER WOMAN

You had to know these would be included.  Her and I have a lot in common with the whole cowboy life so naturally her actions are a good fit for many of my photos.  She has also updated her current actions and is working on set number three!

PANOSFX

Great free and paid actions. The free ones require registration but are totally worth it!adobe_photoshop_logo

devianART

LIKNES

SHUTTERFREAKS

Extras

PHOTOSHOPROADMAP (who did a heck of a job linking to all the different ones!!)

100 Wonderful Photo Effects Photoshop Tutorials
70 Horror, Blood and Gore Photoshop Effects and Brushes
Dreamy, Magical and Lighting Effects Photoshop Tutorials
15 Artistic Watercolor Effects Photoshop Tutorials
15 Fantastic and Absolutely Free Photoshop Plugins
Complex and Sophisticated Lettering Designs Photoshop Tutorials
30 Fascinating Video Game Inspired Photoshop Tutorials and Brushes
35 Creative Portrait Effects Photoshop Tutorials
30 Awesome Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials
25 Inspiring Movie, Music and Art Posters Photoshop Tutorials
30 Beautiful Photo Frames and Borders Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes and Actions
64 essential guides, tips and tutorials to definitely master Photoshop like a pro
The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web
100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes
Grunge and dirty Photoshop tutorials, brushes and textures

BUY

Finally, if you want to create your own Photoshop action, check out Veerle’s Blog for a step-by-step tutorial!

]]> http://acowboyswife.com/1000-photoshop-actions-plugins-presets-tutorials-and-brushes/feed/ 11 Developing a Photography Workflow, the Basics http://acowboyswife.com/developing-a-photography-workflow-the-basics/ http://acowboyswife.com/developing-a-photography-workflow-the-basics/#comments Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:05:45 +0000 A Cowboy's Wife http://acowboyswife.com/?p=2227 Establishing a work-flow for processing your images can speed the editing up a great deal hence saving you time to do other things you love.

I recommend the first thing you do is back up your photos. Don’t do it later, do it now and I recommend backing up to a DVD or to an external hard drive.

The most obvious thing to do once you’ve downloaded your photos to your computer is delete the ones that are no good. You will have a few, perhaps many not so flattering photos so go through and get rid of the ones that will be too much work to edit. This can include out of focus, poorly exposed, and not so pretty facial expressions. Toss them out and never look back!

Color adjustments come next. This is where you’ll want to check your levels, contrast, saturation, etc. If you don’t know how to do all this manually, simply trying using auto levels & auto contrasts. Many times it can make a significant difference and improve the quality of the photo.

This is the time to do any extra editing you want like blurring, dodging, and burning. After this, you can use sharpen.

Now save your photo. I use Photoshop so I like to save as PSD and JPEG. After you have saved your photo, you can crop or resize to your liking. I always do this after everything else just in case I crop too much or resize too small. I know that I have the original processed and saved so there won’t be any need to panic if I mess up.

Printing to Paper

There are many factors that affect how your image will turn out printed to paper vs. printed to web. It all has to do with RGB, more pixels and other fancy jargon. In a nutshell, the higher resolution images result in higher quality prints. To give you an idea, here’s the recommend resolution for certain print sizes.cameraflow

  • • 1 megapixel 640 x 480 4×6
  • • 1.x megapixel 1280 x 960 4×6
  • • 2.x megapixel 1600 x 1200 4×6, 5×7, 8×10
  • • 3.x megapixel 2048 x 1536 4×6, 5×7, 8×10
  • • 4.x megapixel 2372 x 1804 4×6, 5×7, 8×10
  • • 5.x megapixel 2560 x 1920 4×6, 5×7, 8×10

Here are the minimum resolutions recommended:

  • • 4×6–640×480 pixels
  • • 5×7 –1050×750 pixels
  • • 8×10–1500×1200 pixels

Not all of this will apply to everyone, but what’s great about establishing a work-flow, is finding out what works for you and what steps you can add or avoid for the process to run smooth. Every photographer is different and once you set up a routine, you’ll be able to backup, edit, manage, save and even print your photos in not time.

]]> http://acowboyswife.com/developing-a-photography-workflow-the-basics/feed/ 3 Simple Color Highlighting with Photoshop http://acowboyswife.com/simple-color-highlighting-with-photoshop/ http://acowboyswife.com/simple-color-highlighting-with-photoshop/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:13:50 +0000 A Cowboy's Wife http://acowboyswife.com/?p=1108 After checking out the Diva’s tutorial on color highlighting, I thought I would recreate the tutorial using Adobe Photoshop instead of Gimp since this is what I have.  Basically it’s the same thing but we have different readers so I thought I’d do it for my readers.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing photos that are black and white with one particular object in color and I’ve always wanted to know how to accomplish this…now I do.  I wanted to make a video but kids were running around and husband was laughing at me.  UGH!

Here’s a simple tutorial color highlighting a flower.

1) Open your photo up in photoshop.  Create a new layer; click on ‘Layer’, new, then ok.

Now click on your fill bucket choosing the black color.  Make sure you are working on your new layer and not the image itself.  See the right side in the picture below.  Fill your layer with the black color.

Now under your layers tab, click on color towards the bottom like you see below.

This is what it should look like when you click on color.  It should create a black and white look. If it doesn’t, congratulations, you’ve already messed up;)

Staying on the same layer, choose your eraser.  Choose your brush size.  I click on the [ & ] to adjust the size.  Now erase the subject that you want to be in color like you see below.  Flatten and viola!

Here are the before and after shots of my flower.  Again, thank you Domestic Diva for teaching me how to do this fun project!

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