It’s a great book for people who use the big Photoshop – lots of useful tips and not too many funky effects that you’ll never use.  Even for those of you using Photoshop Elements, remember that you can find Channels actions that will add channel functions into Elements.  Of course, I had those actions a long time and never knew what to do with them. . . .

The book inspired me to create some Elements-compatible actions that will give you great effects by sneaking Photoshop Channels functions into Elements.

The first action was my noise reducing action from last week.  And today, I have a color pop action that replicates Photoshop’s Lab mode channels in Elements and uses them to boost the colors.

Here is a picture before I ran the new Lab Color Boost action:

It’s a beautiful picture even untouched.  I didn’t take it, but I would have been proud to!  Here is the after:

Before running my Lab Color Pop action, I started with the DPM Defog Action.  Then, I used Nik Software’s Dfine.  (Side Note:  I’m just learning how much Nik’s Dfine can do to clarify and reduce noise.  You’ll hear more about this next week.  If you’re interested in checking it out in the meantime, you can download a free trial.  Or use discount code DPM for a 15% off coupon.)

I finished the editing by running a double pass of the Unsharp Mask and adding a vignette.

Follow the rainbow to download this action for yourself.

If you like this action, please use the Share & Enjoy link below to Stumble Upon, Twitter, Digg or Facebook about it!  Thank you!

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I bought Imagenomic’s Noiseware quite a while ago.   It is the best noise reducer I’ve ever used.  And for a while before that, I used the free Noiseware Community Edition standalone.  The free version works great, but it’s a separate program and dosen’t work from within Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

As I mentioned in last week’s Viveza review, I don’t like programs that require me to open a picture in Photoshop, close it and reopen it in another program for part of my editing.  So, I created an action for Photoshop Elements that reduces noise from within PSE so that you don’t have to jump from program to program with one image.

Now, this action isn’t as good as Noiseware, so for important or very noisy pictures, I would definitely recommend using their standalone product.  However, it works ok, especially considering that it’s free and works from inside PSE.

You can click on this picture for a bigger view where you can really see the difference.

About Noise

There are a couple of things about noise that it’s helpful to know.  First off, reducing noise is the opposite of sharpening, so it’s best to remove noise in as few of your pixels as possible.

And second, noise is usually worst in the blue channel of a photograph.  That doesn’t mean much to PSE users, I know.  But the idea is that if you can focus your noise reduction on one channel of your picture, you’ll get maximum noise reduction with a minimum of blurring.

This action sneaks the red, green and blue channels into PSE and runs the noise filter on them.  These channels are usually available only in the big Photoshop unless you “action” them into PSE.

After running the action, you will end up with three new layers, all of which are turned off and invisible.  Zoom in on your image and one by one, turn each layer on to see which removes the most noise.  Usually it will be the blue layer, but not always.

Download the DPM Noise Reducer here.

I hope you like this action!  What else is in the works at DPM?  I’m contemplating another channels based action.  You can find several free places to get actions that allow you to manipulate channels in PSE, but if you’re like me, you might not know what to do with them.  We can change that!

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Planet Photoshop featured a Tip of the Day last week on creating light depth with layer blending.  I loved it and created an action based on this tutorial.

It works best on shots that have dramatic lighting, like off-camera lighting.  I liked it on this sunset shot also.  You can see the before and after here:

Click through on this thumbnail for a link to the action page.

Do you like this action?  If you do, I’d really appreciate you spreading the word about it by using the Share and Enjoy buttons at the end of this post.  Thank you!

And click here for the other free actions for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements from Digital Photography for Moms.

Next up?  The fastest and easiest way EVAH to adjust contrast, brightness and saturation in a photo.  This will be the first in a series of posts on quick, easy and stunning adjustments.  Happy Independence Day to everyone in the States or to anyone who has freedom and independence in their lives.

CoffeeShop Latest Free Actions

CoffeeShop Rita has been busy lately with one awesome post after another!  I am behind on trying out her latest freebies, the Glamour Glow PS/PSE action and the Clipping Mask Tutorial for her Storyboards.  But I have played with the Pink Glow action and LOVE it!

Look what the pink glow did for this picture of my BabyGirl!  You can control the glow, the color tones and convert it to black and white, easily.  The options with this action are limitless!  I masked back in a muted color on my brown-eyed girl’s outfit.  I took this shot with on-camera flash which was a bit too strong.  Using the action hid some of the flash effects, which the picture sorely needed!

Pixel Fairy Princess Classes

A week or two ago, I blogged about the photography workshop being hosted at the end of May in Dallas by Pixel Fairy Princess.  Well, I just couldn’t resist signing up.  Is anyone else going?  I am so excited to learn from Debbie and the other attendees.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Pixel Fairy Princess is also hosting an online session on how to get Great Faces in your photos.  Click on the picture below to link through for more info.  Aren’t the pictures in the flier stunning?  If you’re interested, email Launa at PixelFairyPrincess2 at gmail dot com and ask for the Digital Photography for Moms discount on the Great Faces class!

You might have noticed the new Donation button in the sidebar of my website.  I’m trying to think of ways to continue to be a Stay-at-Home Mom in this terrible economy.  Your kind comments and emails are the highlight of blogging for me.  However, if you’d like to make a donation for my tutorials and actions, that would be a close second on my highlight list!  Thank you.

This Reflection Action works in Photoshop Elements 5, 6 & 7 on Vista, and XP.  And probably Mac as well.  It also runs in Photoshop CS4, and I would guess that it runs in earlier versions of Photoshop too.  I think it runs in PSE 4 as well, but my copy of  PSE 4 is on the fritz so I can’t test it.

In addition to adding a dreamy or romantic note to your image, it would work nicely for product shots for Ebay, Etsi or your own web store.  And don’t forget that you can add a mask and isolate the reflection to just part of the image.  It would only take  a bit of modification to put the reflection on a pond or mirror that appeared in your picture.

Make sure to read the instructions on the action download page.  And click on this image to link to the download and instructions page:

CoffeeShop’s latest addition to its collection gave me the perfect chance to experiment.  Rita’s Golden Vintage Free Action is simply beautiful.  The warm tone offsets some of the washed-out look that often comes from vintage actions.  I love it!

Here is my before and after:

Before:

After:

Thank you CoffeeShop Rita, for another beautiful action!

Thanks to some suggestions from a couple of very bright readers, I’ve reworked the Digital Photography for Moms Perfect Workflow Free Action.  As always, it works in Photoshop Elements as well as Photoshop.  This new version makes it easier to adjust the Shadows/Highlight layer.

If you’ve already installed version 1, all you need to do is copy and paste the ATN file into the appropriate effects folder.  You don’t need to change the thumbnail images.

Have a good weekend!  I’m so glad to be back at my blog, and I’ve recently found the suitcase that my camera is in!  If only I enjoyed unpacking as much as I enjoy photography and Photoshop. . . .

Rita at CoffeeShop released her much-anticipated CoffeeShop Creamy Chocolate B&W action and it is fabulous.  It adds just a bit of a glow to your image.  Here’s a conversion I just did.

And yesterday I published an almost-miraculous (yeah, right), defogging action pack.  It automates four different degrees of defogging to help clear your image of environmental or digital fog. 

Because none of us have anything else to do besides playing with Photoshop all weekend, right?

Subscribe to Digital Photography for Moms.  Coming up soon, I will publish a tutorial for recording your images in Raw, and an action to accompany my Perfect Photoshop Elements Workflow.

Defog Free Action Pack from Digital Photography For Moms

Sometimes a digital camera captures some sort of funky haze in a photograph.  Whether this fog is environmental or digital, there is a little trick that I run on some of my photos to help remove the haze and give them a clarity pop.  Give it a try on any image that isn’t clearn and crisp enough, even on portraits taken inside.  You’ll be amazed!

Because this defog process can be a bit tedious to apply to lots of pictures, I created an action to automate the process.  And because I’m having so much fun creating actions and there just aren’t enough that work in Photoshop Elements, I’m sharing the action with all of you!  It works in PSE 4, 5, 6 and 7, Photoshop CS4, and probably other versions of Photoshop as well.

Make sure you read the notes on this download page.  Especially the one that says you should only use one of the four layers that this action will produce on any given image.  Otherwise you’ll end up with an overprocessed and harsh image.

Click on this image to link to the download page:

I’m working on an action to automate a basic workflow, based on my Perfect Photoshop Elements workflow tutorial.  It should be ready in the next week or so!

And if you need some photographic inspiration, check out last week’s post on books that will teach you to develop your creative eye.

Subscribe to Digital Photography for Moms so that you don’t miss a free Photoshop Elements action or tutorial.

This action creates a drop shadow under your picture.  It looks super for posting images on Flickr, or on a blog.  Or for simply printing a picture on a scrapbook page.  Here’s an example:

The background under the drop shadow is transparent if you save your file as a PNG, so that you can use it on any color paper or web page. [Edit:  Keep in mind that if you flatten your PNG, you lose your transparency.  So plan your workflow accordingly.]

And it works in Photoshop Elements 4, 5, 6 and 7  as well as Photoshop.

Click on this image, then scroll to the middle of the page for the download link.

Thank you, CoffeeShop Rita, for your inspiration, encouragement and education in creating Photoshop actions!

So, what do you think? Does this action work for you?  Thank you for your feedback!

Erin