Last Saturday Morning (Without My Glasses)
Photos 1-6 & 8 processed with Swimming In The Bay
Photo 7 processed with Play’n In The Sprinkler
from the upcoming Seasons: Summer collection.
actions
Seasons – Spring Companion Action Set
The other day on Facebook I asked for readers to send me some photos to help kick off and showcase the release of the latest action set in a four set mini pack series called Seasons: Spring Companion, which I’m happy to say is now available. I wanted to create some small companion sets to compliment the seasons, and create actions that highlight the tones and colors of spring (greens, blues, pinks!) and that also counter act the harshness the weather can add to your photos during this season.
These images were so lovely, and so much fun to play with, I think I’ll make this a new tradition! It was so nice to see the work of others and to test out my actions on images other than my own. Thank you Alix Bannon, Foxtale Photography, Samantha Burnett, and Moira Brown for sending over your work!
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Lovely work by talented photographers.
That first photo is so beautiful.
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hooray, going to try them out right now!
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Sakura Picnic
Spring is here for us! It’s slipping from warm to cold back to warm again, and the flowers are blooming and critters are coming out to play. A few weeks ago Tom and I went to a park to see the sakura blossoms, but the park was actually closed when we arrived, so we didn’t get to go in. There were still some trees on the outskirts, however, which was more than enough for me. In Japan the cherry trees are a big deal and entire cities carry the smell. It really signifies spring and brings back a lot of fond childhood memories for me, so I was happy to have the chance to enjoy them.
These photos were all processed with an action (Our Picnic In The Grass) from the new set, and it’s pretty much my new favorite action, but I wanted to wait to share these photos until I was closer to releasing the set. I wrapped up the final touches today, will be whipping up some sample shots, and should be placing them in the shop next week.
Have a great weekend, friends!
view the bokeh panorama version of this shot!
Double Exposure Tutorial & Free Action
Happy Friday, everyone! I thought I’d give you all a treat today and write up a quick tutorial on how to recreate a double exposure in Photoshop. First of all, I’m sure there are lots of ways to do this, and even more ways to make it look more authentic, but since it really requires mass tinkering for each image, I thought I’d share the basics of what I do with you.
The simplest way to do it would be to copy one photo onto the other as a new layer, and then to change the layer’s blending mode to “Screen” and further adjust the opacity, but we’re going to add an additional tip. If you want to learn how to do it yourself, read on. But I’ve also made a few handy little actions in case you want to speed up the process. Download them for free here. =)
I find that just doing the old copy/paste/screen routine doesn’t quite get the balance I like. One image is always darker than the other and doesn’t really look like a genuine double exposure. So what I like to do is add a Multiply layer from the first image. It probably sounds confusing, so don’t worry, we’ll break it down.
The How To, Gumshoe
- First you’ll want to open both your images in Photoshop. Copy the first image (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C) and paste it onto the second image (Ctrl+V). If you want to go the extra mile you can also copy the second image onto the first and go through all the steps twice to see which image you like better. (They will be different!)
- Next put the top layer blending mode to “Screen”. If you have your layers window open, this should be located in the right hand sidebar. If not, go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options and when the window pops up you should see a drop down box that reads “Blending Mode Normal”. Click that box and select “Screen” from the list.
- Now copy your original layer (re-select your “background” layer, right click, select “Duplicate Layer”) and change the blending mode to “Multiply”. You should notice right away the balance between your two images is adjusted. Sometimes this is enough, sometimes I add another Multiply layer.
See, easy peasy! Enjoy!
Belated Birthday Lunch & How To Replicate Film
On Saturday we visited Tom’s mom and her husband for a little belated birthday gathering, and she spoiled us with some fabulous vegan food and deserts (cinnamon infused cherry cobbler, oh my gosh) and we spent all day talking about life and visiting. (We always spend several hours over there talking before realizing that it’s been as long as it has.) And aside from spilling water on my desk and spending fifteen minutes airing out my wallet, keyboard, and random papers with a hair dryer- my Sunday was fairly uneventful, but in a good way. It left me feeling rested and excited to start the work week! I hope yours was just as delightful.
On a different note, many of you have been emailing me asking me if it’s possible to “truly replicate” the look of film using the Reminisce action set, and so I thought I would process these photos to kind of show you the potential. Whether your film habit is too expensive, conflicts with your vegan values, or you just want to experiment- it’s definitely possible. While every type of film is different, and there are lots of different types of looks you may want to accomplish, it is possible to get fairly close to so many using what is provided in the set. I tried to keep it simple for this example and used only “Sage” (the “Reminisce” layer was between 80-100 opacity for each photo), sometimes with “Reminisce” added on top. After that I dropped this handy film style dust & particles layer [download full res] on top (set it to screen, 50-80% opacity) and voilà , film craving satisfied. Enjoy!
Reminisce – Film Style Actions
For those of you that visit this blog for reasons unrelated to photo-processing (HI!) I apologize in advance for postponing the Spurred project to announce this release. For those of you that have been patiently waiting the last few months for the film actions- The wait is over! I’m happy to release Reminisce, a collection of 22 Film Style Actions (11 Subtle Film Styles & 11 Potent Film Styles), 6 Essentials Actions, and 3 Bonus Helper Actions. On Thursday of last week I decided I promised some of you I’d have them out by Christmas and I really wanted to keep that promise. So I’ve been glued to Photoshop ever since, but I wouldn’t rest until I felt everything was as perfect as it could be. I am positively in love with this collection and have been using it every day (as you’ve probably noticed), and I hope you love it as much as I do. You can visit the Reminisce page for more details and a slightly goofy video mini-tour of the action set.
Happy Holidays!
Strawberry Delight via Springridge II & Film Style Actions Preview
Inside the Springridge building is a two floor gift shop, party rooms, and a bustling bakery. For the season, they had strawberry muffins on display and strawberry pie. It’s so hard to find just plain strawberry pie here because usually it’s paired with rhubarb or something else bitter and I don’t like it at all. My mouth waters at the thought of plain strawberry pie. Or strawberry peach pie. Oh yum, yum, yum. (For our wedding Tom and I had strawberry peach pie among our chosen delights.) But enough about pie, because I’d like to tell you about these new actions I’ve been working on before I ‘ve written a novel of a post. As you may have guessed by the title (and I may have mentioned) that I’ve been working on some film-style actions. This is just a basic preview of one of the actions, but it’s my hope to have very delicate and subtle film styles as well as some wilder replications. Everything that you see here was processed with one unnamed action and needed no tweaking afterward. Exciting!!
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You don’t like… strawberry rhubarb… PIE?!? How can this be? I jump for joy every year when rhubarb starts showing up in the produce aisles! Can’t say I’ve ever had a straight-up strawberry pie before, though. Sounds crazy sweet, I dunno if I could handle it. I love me some rhubarb to hold my teef together, haha.
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Wonderful images, Sara!
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Sara Lynn Paige Actions – A Colorful Morning
Good morning, everyone!! I am happy to announce the release of my color action set! I can’t believe it; I set a tentative release date and ACTUALLY made it. I told myself I’d release them on the last Thursday morning in April and look- everything is done and ready and bam! This is a huge release of 25 actions, and probably the last one of it’s kind for quite a while, so I really hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them. Also, I thought maybe this weekend I would make a video of how I use (and load) the actions in Photoshop, if that’s something you might be interested in? Anyway, here they are, have fun, and don’t forget I’d love any feedback you might have and I’d especially love to see any results you’d share with me. (But you don’t have to, of course.) Have fun!
If you’re on Flickr, please consider joining my action group to share your work, ask questions, or just keep updated on upcoming releases. Please let me know if you have any questions or need any assistance! Enjoy!
What The Heck Are Actions?
Don’t use actions? Don’t worry, it’s really easy. Actions are saved steps in Photoshop that do all the work for you when it comes to processing your photo. Simply open your photo in Photoshop, pick the action you want, and press play. In less time than it takes to brew a cup of tea, you have a processed photo.
A Caramel Chai Caturday
I’m about a week or two away from releasing the Colorful Morning action set, and then a few weeks later Morn will be turning seven. Which is crazy because for the past two years I’ve been saying he’s six. But now he’s actually six and turning seven! He’s growing up so fast!! Which reminds me: a reader requested that Morn (or Pumpkin) post another blog post soon, so I’ve told the boys they have next Caturday! As the Japanese would say, please look forward to it!
[narrowcolumn side="left"]
Morn
age: 6 (7 in May)
weight: 11 lbs
likes: eating, Tom, cuddling, laps,
bathing people he likes, chasing Pumpkin,
head butting, kissing (licking) noses, catnip
dislikes: waiting for food, not being fed, mean cats, when Tom is not home
favorite activities: hunting, eating, playing with feathered toys, taking walks outdoors
[/narrowcolumn]
[narrowcolumn side="right"]Pumpkin
age: 3 (4 in August)
weight: 9 lbs
likes: cuddling, air hugs,
cardboard boxes, plastic bags,
womb-like environments
dislikes: being left alone, sleeping alone, anything alone, the vacuum
favorite activities: cuddling, being held in
between two people hugging, exploring
[/narrowcolumn]
Photos 5-9 taken by Tom.
All processed with A Colorful Morning: Caramel Chai.
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I want a kitty to cuddle. And yay for the fact that this post was published on my birthday!
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Happy belated birthday! =)
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A Taste of Spring
On Sunday we went to see Bronwyn for a spring nature expedition. We scouted animal tracks, discovered a fox den, rode in a canoe, stumbled upon a coyote kill spot, and made nests for the local wildlife. Hello, Spring. So nice to see you again.
5-7 taken by Bronwyn
8-11 taken by Tom
Photos all processed with unreleased Green Tea Raspberry action.
Sara Lynn Paige Actions (The Black & White Collection)
Exciting News!
A lot of requests come in for instruction on processing photographs, and while I’m more than willing to help people find what they’re looking for if I have time, I tend to receive the same type of requests over and over, and a lot of them: “How do you get such vivid and colorful photos?”, “How do you make your b&w photos look like real black and white?” and some are even so bold as to ask, “What do you do, step by step to achieve this?” Well, I finally decided to spare myself some time (and yours) and create some actions for those of you looking to dabble in Photoshop on your own. I decided to start with a black & white collection (boy, these take a lot of work!) and after months of work and non-stop tinkering, I’m proud to announce a finalized collection I am extremely happy with.
If you’re on Flickr, please consider joining my action group to share your work, ask questions, or just keep updated on upcoming releases. Please let me know if you have any questions or need any assistance! Enjoy!
What The Heck Are Actions?
Don’t use actions? Don’t worry, it’s really easy. Actions are saved steps in Photoshop that do all the work for you when it comes to processing your photo. Simply open your photo in Photoshop, pick the action you want, and press play. In less time than it takes to brew a cup of tea, you have a processed photo.
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