A Cowboy's Wife » photoshop

1000+ Photoshop Actions, Plugins, Presets, Tutorials and Brushes

A Cowboy's Wife — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:00:34 +0000

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.

~ CoffeeShop’s Actions and Presets
~ Storyboard Actions and Templates —>Love this!!!
~Textures —>Tons of beautiful textures/backgrounds & tutorial to show you how to use them.

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!

~ Pioneer Woman Set 1 —>My Favorite that includes Vintage-Boost-Quick Edge Burn (& more)
~ Pioneer Woman Set 2 —>Includes my fave, the 70′s.

PANOSFX

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

devianART

LIKNES

SHUTTERFREAKS

Extras

~Text and Image Effects by FinesseFX
~Turning Turnip: Photo cube effect – Apply 3D photo cube effect to any image.
~Page Curl Photoshop Action - Create a page curl in any of the four corners of an image.
~ Grungy Goth Painter
~ eCover Action
~ Explosion Action
~ AstroTurf Text Action and more
~ Electric Light Text
~ Blood Text Action (Great for Halloween!)

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

Adobe Photoshop at Amazon
Adobe Photoshop at Ebay (Research the Seller before Buying)
Adobe Photoshop Academic Superstore (HUGE discounts for students and teachers…..

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

Vintage Days, Vintage Looks

A Cowboy's Wife — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:12:01 +0000

My husband and son were meant to live back in the olden days. Not this gal tho, no sir-ree! I just assume to live in the day of the iphone and airplanes.

Anyways, don’t cowboys and their gear just look better vintage style? It’s like it takes you back to those John Wayne days, the days where people worked hard and had values. When things meant something, not that they don’t know but it was a different day back then. You had more appreciation for the little things.

So I was looking at some photos and turned a million of them into the vintage look because I think it’s a natural cowboy look. The one of my son is my fave of course. Everytime I look at him, I just can’t believe he’s growing up so fast…..just a couple more years and he’ll be on his own:(

*Sigh* I guess I’m a little sappy tonight. I blame that on the movie Kramer vs. Kramer I watched tonight.

Do you have a favorite look that you give your photos?

Editing Grainy Pictures and Cloning

A Cowboy's Wife — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:15:05 +0000

I recently had a guest post on my food blog from Maternal Spark. Well, actually it’s a republished post of Butterfly Cupcakes with a little photo editing. I’m getting pickier about the photos that go on my food blog and not that hers were bad but they were a bit grainy and there was a distraction.

With this simple tutorial, you’ll be able to fix those grainy pictures and use the clone stamp. First, the grainy stuff is called noise. This is usually caused by using a high ISO which is whole nuther topic to get into and we won’t do that today;) The clone stamp does just what it says. It will clone what you have selected. I will be using the FREE paint.net program because I know that most of you probably can’t afford software like Adobe Photoshop. Hell, I can’t even afford it. It was given to me! But if you do find some awesome budget software somewhere, please do share!

With this cute little butterfly cupcake picture, I needed to reduce the noise so that it wasn’t so grainy and I wanted to get rid of that line because it distracts from the cupcake itself. I also cropped it closer to the cupcake so that you focus on the cupcake and not the napkin or plate so much.

Here’s the orginal photo:

First, let’s reduce the noise and get rid of the grain. After having your photo opened up in paint.net, you’re going to click on:

* EFFECTS, NOISE, REDUCE NOISE

Now some numbers will come and you can change it to suit your liking. I don’t mess with it, I leave it at default because I’m lazy and hit OK.

Here is the side by side comparison of what kind of impact reducing the noise makes. Can you tell the difference? The right side has had the noise reduced.

Okay, so you see that horizontal line? It aggravates me and takes away from this adorable little cupcake so I’m gonna get rid of it! This is where the CLONE stamp comes in. You click on the little stamp first. Then you find the part of the picture that you want to use to cover up that line. I want it to match the wood so I’m going to clone as close to the line as possible to get a perfect match. I do this all the way to the end. I don’t just click one time and use the same color all the way because the wood color doesn’t match all the way across.

You are going to hold down the CTRL key while you left click on the part you want to clone.
Then you are going to let go of the CTRL key and just do a regular left click over the line or part you want to camouflage.

This is what it should look like.

I did this all the way across the photo and for those small in between spots, I zoomed to make it easier. That’s all there is to it! It’s very easy to do and here is the final result.

Here they are side by side. I cropped, reduced the noise, and cloned a little to get that line out of there.