I’ve always loved seeing other photographers before’s & after’s. I love looking at where the creative process in photoshop takes them and seeing the end result. Hopefully, you enjoy it as much as I do

The one on the left is straight out of the camera or SOOC and the right is the edited image.

Whenever I edit a picture I usually start with the same basic actions from my set of actions:
- Lighten
- Color Boost
- Make it Pop (and adjust the opacity to my liking)

Depending on the picture I will make a few adjustments to the color and contrast using curves.
I also like to use portaiture on some of my images.
FYI-curves is my most used tool in photoshop.

Some of my other favorite actions to use are:
- My Feeling Blue
- Totally Rad’s Pool Party
- Pioneer Woman’s Seventies (I used this on the first  image with the opacity turned down to about 30%)
- My Vintage Gold
- Totally Rad’s Yin/Yang (love this one)
- Totally Rad’s Claire-ify

For black & whites:
- Totally Rad’s BAMF 16-bit
- My Delicious B&W

Sometimes I like to make a duplicate copy of one image. I will run the BAMF 16-bit action on one and my delicious B&W on the other. Then I will merge the two images and adjust the opacity of the layers until I get the desire B&W look I’m going for. Did that make any sense? Clear as mud, right?

Until next time……

I must say that I’m so lucky to be surrounded by so many talented photographers!
I loved all the pictures you sent me, which made it really hard to pick favorites.
Thanks so much for taking the time to send them in!

Now how about a few of your Delicious B&W’s? I will resist the urge to say, “cute & love” for every single picture. I make no promises that I will succeed. I might have to get out my thesaurus for this post.

Sweet Bliss Photography- Jenny B– 
Be sill my heart! I could possibly eat that little chubs right up. And I love me some good bokeh.

Mari Thompson–
How perfect and sweet is this?! My kids never look this sweet… or this perfect. Especially when holding an ice cream cone.

Ransonet Patterson–
Love the contrast of the B&W!

Sarah Blamires–
I just adore this shot, five little kids (and Dad) all in a row. There’s nothing to distract or take away from this photo- it’s all about the family. Just the way it should be.

Kimberly Taksony–
Love the little bit of edginess in this one.

Photography by Merilee–
So, so cool!

Jen Chandler– 
I can almost hear this little girl squealing with laughter.

Kristie Ferronato–
This picture makes my eyes happy. I’m serious. Eyes have feelings too you know.  The composition and the depth of field is perfect!

Ellie Cutler–
Ummmm, I love this one. Those expressions are priceless!

Chell Leighton–
You can never have enough pictures of babies… too sweet!

Sarah Blamires–
I love how the texture of the sand pops out in this one. How do kids manage to fall asleep in the most awkward places? Except for my children of course. They will only fall asleep if they are in their bed. It’s a curse.

Aimee Fredy–
Those eyes melt my heart. And just so you know, the color version of this one is equally as stunning.

Sweet Bliss Photography- Jenny B.–
Everything about this one screams PERFECTION! I love it!!

Thanks again for sharing your talent with me!
Ginnie

I am giving away a new Free Photoshop Action, which has been appropriately named Delicious B&W!
This is a Black & White photoshop action to fall in love with, if I do say so myself.

> Download free Photoshop action <

* * * * *

A word on actions for Photoshop:
Photoshop actions are not meant to be one size fits all, meaning that sometimes you need to play around with the PS action a bit until you get the desired look you’re going for. Just in case you’re unfamiliar with photoshop actions, I’ve written a couple quick tips on how to modify and tweak your photo to make it your own below:

• Before you run the action make sure you start out with a well exposed image. If you need to, adjust the lighting of the image in photoshop. (I prefer curves.)
• After you run the action you’ll notice an arrow next to the Delicious B&W folder in the layers palette.
• Click on the arrow and it’ll show a drop down of all the layers that were used in the action.
• Now select any one of the photo shop layers from the dropdown and you will be able to adjust each of them individually.

1- Adjust the opacity in one or more layers (opacity refers to the amount of transparency a layer has). You can click on each individual layer in the dropdown to adjust the opacity to your taste and liking.

*Example: For the first three images, the opacity of the Highlight layer was set at 100%.
In the picture of Macie (the one with the little diva kissy face) I turned the Highlight layer down to 70% to soften the effect of that layer just a bit.

2. You can hide or show a layer by clicking on the eye.
(And if you keep clicking on it really fast it looks like it’s winking at you.)
(OK… not really. But that would have been cool.)

I encourage you to play around with this photoshop action and tweak it to match your style.  There is no right or wrong way.
(Just like when you eat a Reeces!)

Ginnie

P.S. I’d love to see what you can do with this PS action, and if you’d like, email an image that you used the this black and white action on to ginniejphotography[a]gmail.com.  If I have your permission, I’ll do a post showing my favorites from the ones that I receive (if you don’t want me to show it, be sure to tell me this in the email).  Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Would you believe that I have had this blog for almost 8 months and never used it?
My poor photographer blog sat here neglected all by itself .
Well, that is about to change starting…. now.

Big thanks to my brother Tyson for helping me doing it all for me. He’s HTML smart like that.

So how about more free photoshop actions?

I think this free photo shop action happens to be one of my favorite free photoshop actions.

Before you run the free Photoshop actions, make sure you start out with a well exposed photo image. If the image is too dark the action will not have the same effect. I like to use my Photoshop Lighten Action for under exposed images or you can always lighten it yourself. I prefer using curves in Photoshop.

Above is the photo image SOOC (straight out of camera)

Above is the image with my free Photoshop Soft Gold action at 93% opacity

And for kicks, above is the image with…
- Soft Gold action 93% opacity
- my Color Boost action 100% opacity
- my Make it POP action 32% opacity
- and the edges burned with the exposure set at 18%

Conveniently enough, if you want to get my Make it POP Photoshop actions, Color Boost you can download it by selecting the Photoshop Actions link at the top.

To download the free Soft Gold action click below
free photoshop actions

This photo shop action is compatible with the Photoshop CS versions and is available for unlimited downloads. Enjoy!

What do I want in return? Not much, just leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts! Oh, and make sure to update your subscription/google reader accounts from my old photo blog to my new site.
Thanks!