I just realized the greatness of Photoshop Actions, and the realization makes me feel GREAT!
Of course, deviantart has a huge collection of user-submitted PS actions, so head on over and check it out if you happened to have Photoshop. If not, there are also other actions and scripts for other well-known post processing software like GIMP.
This is by far the coolest thing I find for Photoshop, aside from some high grade plugins.
Posted on: December 29th, 2009 Vibrance

Playing with the vibrancy action found at DigitalPhoton.
I was going through my watches on dA to do some visual learning, and realized that in fact, many pieces I like have very vibrant color and stronger contrast, which I think is a big part that I miss when I post process many of my images.
As an experiment, the above image shows the difference between my original PP (left) and my attempt using the PS Action.

I have tried the glowing text effect before, but since it has been a while, I figured I need to brush up my skills again. As a touch, I added an old effect that I surprisingly remembered how to do: the glowing line. Here’s a quick tutorial of how to achieve the effect:
- (In Photoshop) Select Brush, and use a small, soft brush (5px in the above example)
- Select Pen tool, and select the option “paths”
- Mark your path on the canvas. Once done, right click on the path and select “Stroke Path”. Use “Brush” and check “simulate pressure”
- You should have the line effect. To make it glow, add the “outer glow” to the layer through its blending options
Have fun!
As an addition to previously mentioned Photoshop tutorials, these 22 just add to the collection. Since my last visit to the post, I have only tried out the movie effect, but since not too long ago I was just wondering how to do the vantage effect, this post may very well come in handy in the near future.
Just for bonus, here are 100 more tutorials for various Photoshop tutorials. Some were mentioned in other posts, but there are definitely some distinct collections.
When it comes to photo enhancement, each photographer and graphic designer has his or her own opinion, but in the end, it’s all about producing a piece of art that the creator really appreciate.
For me, I like to experiment and learn. I am very open to new techniques that might help make the a picture stand out even more, and the list offered by smashing apps is just a small collection of wonderful techniques one can use on his or her photos.
Looks like I’ll spend quite some time learning more about Photoshop!