Just Playing Around

[Stagecoach]

Last night I came across 'Actions' in PSCC and with my philosophy of reverse learning tonight shot a set a images that I could experiment using 'Actions' on to PP faster.

A very crudely set up water drop stage, black saucepan full of water in the sink, tap wrapped with a cloth and nudged on to get a droplet stream, red folder on splash-back with the SB600 aimed at it at 45 deg and fired away.

So on opening in PS and after cropping I now have 'Actions' for a) sharpening in LAB mode, b) re-sizing and c) adding a matte.







Was it a useful exercise, well I know how to make, save and use 'Actions' now

Grahame

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[Stagecoach]

Thank you John, not really sure what else I'm going to use actions for yet.

[John 2]

Not sure about your actions Grahame but I do like the three images. I particularly like your choice of colour.

[Mike Buckley]

Aside from the purpose of your exercise, you also managed to produce three very attractive images.

[GBO25]

The actions are neither here nor there for me either but the exposure you got with the colours and flash are excellent. Great shooting.

[KimC]

Love the images and the red is just perfect!

[bnnrcn]

Very nice images Grahame

[Brownbear]

Wow! Absolutely gorgeous!

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Very nice shots. Too bad drippy faucets are frowned upon here in SoCal due to the drought. I'd like to try that.

[FrankMi]

A well articulated set of images, Grahame!

Actions can be a great time savings and produce predictably consistent results. I've used Actions for repeatable sets of steps, such as creating a frame. What I determined was that for many Actions I really didn't want the results to be all that consistent, preferring to tailor the steps and process to the specific image involved.

I tend to be constantly looking for different subjects to shoot and to learn new techniques. I'm sure that Actions would be quite beneficial to those that concentrate on one type of imagery and need a way to repeatedly perform the same steps.

[Manfred M]

I use Actions all the time. Probably the most commonly used one is when I prepare an image for the internet.

I've automated the resizing (a 36MP image is a bit of overkill, so I shrink it down to something that is around 1600 px in the longest dimension) and colour space changes (I work in ProPhoto and post in sRGB) and will often use a vignette on the images, so rather than forgetting to do them, I recorded the actions and run it (them) prior to posting.

[Stagecoach]

John, Mike, Graham, Kim, Christina & AOA

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Certainly a more fun use for the kitchen sink than washing up in it

Grahame

[Stagecoach]

Frank, Manfred

Actions like any tools may or may not have their place in a specific workflow, the useful thing for me was learning how to undertake them so I can now appreciate their potential.

[dje]

Very creative shots Grahame, well done. I'm also a fan of Actions - they are great for repetitive tasks you do often. One that I use a lot is preparing an image for display on the computer or web. This involves re-sizing, converting to 8 bit, changing colour space to sRGB, output sharpening and saving as jpeg. Another thing to look at with Actions is to assign special function keys to them.

Dave

[IzzieK]

I lost all of mine when I formatted my desktop... so I am starting to collect them again. Quite easy to do when you have time to sit down on the computer during the day without any interruption.

[Nicks Pics]

Looks like a successful effort.

[MarieV]

Very well done Grahame.

[Ndukes]

Excellent creative images, especially no. 1. Great work!

[Stagecoach]

Dave, Izzie Nick, Marie & Neville

Thanks for commenting

Another thing to look at with Actions is to assign special function keys to them.

I can't remember the function keys for most standard things yet but hopefully will get there eventually

I lost all of mine when I formatted my desktop... so I am starting to collect them again. Quite easy to do when you have time to sit down on the computer during the day without any interruption.

The dangers of formatting without having saved those bits you forgot about Izzie

Excellent creative images, especially no. 1. Great work!

With these the creativity seems to come down to what the drop decides to do along with brain/finger response time, there's a lot more uncreative ones in the recycle bin than remain

Grahame