Actions in Photoshop

Slowly....very slowly, I am learning or rather teaching myself photoshop. I have PS CS3 which is pretty old at this point so I figure once I have it down pat it will be obsolete and I'll have to upgrade. Hopefully learning the new version won't be as difficult as learning PS from scratch. We will see. 

I recently had a conversation with my brother about cameras and photo processing now that we are in the digital age. Yeah, I know, we've been in the digital age for at least a decade now but it has taken this long for me to find the value (and desire) in tweeking pictures in photoshop. I am the kind of person who feels that photos are meant to be seen as they are taken but then again, I am finding myself attracted to some of these clearly PS processed pictures I am seeing on blogs these days. So we'll see what camp I ultimately fall in after I play around for a bit.

I discovered "actions" as I scoured Kevin & Amanda's blog for photo, blog, and photoshop advice. I downloaded some free actions from the Pioneer Woman which is a nice entrée into adding flavor to your photographs in PS and figuring out whether you want to be a tweeking sort of photographer. I suspect I will enjoy playing with my pictures to get that extra special shot.

Here is a picture of our sweet boy at the beach this summer in the south of France. I added all sorts of actions to it. I like it. I also like the original. Perhaps I should post both. Okay, I'll do that.

Here is the one I produced in Photoshop...

 

and here is the original.