These actions are the result of my own work as a photographer editing and proofing photos. I created these actions over the last 6 months to help make my work editing photos easier and quicker.

Installation

Begin by installing the actions. The easiest way is to just drag and drop the file "DHSubstantial.atn" into Photoshop. You can also do File > Open and then pick the file "DHSubstantial.atn".

OK what do we have and what do these actions do?

In your actions palette you should see the following actions:

Contrast Optimizer:

This actions is like a "defog" but better. I will increase the contrast between certain colors to give the photo more punch. It also adds more local contrast. The combination of both effects is very useful for photo that were shot in flat light like overcast skylight or indoor shots. The action creates a second layer with the optimized contrast. As always, play with the opacity of this layer to adjust it. Once you are happy you can flatten it before you move on.

DavidPop:

Everyone knows color pop actions. This is my version of, but if wouldn't be a childish david action if it wasn't a little different and better. Instead of pushing colors crazy this actions will enhance colors but since it is optimized for portraits, it will keep skin tones much more natural and enhance other colors more. It is also fully adjustable in it's strength. To get the maximum effect, set both layers (Brighter and BoostColor) to 100%.

color_punch:

This is an alternative version to make color pop in portraits. Again it is trying to leave skin tones natural but it offers a different method of color-enhancing a photo and also excellent control over the final look. It is not pushing the brightness as much. as color pop does.

smoothBW2

This is a new B&W conversion that creates soft B&W images. It works great with photos that have lots of detail and back lit photos. The action will create four layers that allow you to adjust the look quickly.


"contrast" adds or reduces the overall contrast depending on the opacity you set.
"toning" adds a sepia toning. By default it is set to 0% so you have a true B&W.
"AddBrightness" pushed the bright areas only. Play with this layer to get the skin tones right.
"softenedBW" is the black & white version of the photo. You can reduce the opacity to create a vintage look with faded colors.

marble_eye:

Eyes are the windows to the soul, so they should stand out in a portrait. In some light situations eyes appear to be darker on photos than they are in reality. This action helps to bring them back alive.
Typically you run this action with the background layer (your unprocessed shot) selected. It will create a new layer called eyes, but at first you will see no change. Once the action is done, use the brush with an opacity of 30-50% and paint on the eyes. Only paint the pupils and white areas. You will see how the eye become brighter and "stronger" as you paint. It's very easy and tempting to overdo it, but don't worry, once you are done painting both eyes go ahead and adjust the opacity of the layer called eyes back to 20-60% or whatever looks natural to you. Please also read the section further down about layer mask and painting on them. It will help you understand better what painting on layer masks does.

Skin_brightener

helps brightening up skin tones only. This action is pulling skin tones brighter leaving all other colors untouched. Obviously if you have orange-type tones elsewhere in the photo these will become brighter as well, but for many shots this action has helped me a lot, especially with outdoor photos.

Select-Vignette dark & Select-Vignette bright:
These actions create a vignette effect based on a rough selection you make. If you run the action you will be prompted to make a selection for the vignette effect. Use the circular selection tool and make an elliptical selection across the entire image. However feel free to get creative by using the lasso to draw other shapes. For example to really make a face pop out against the background, make a selection just around the face and run the action.
As always, the effect is created as a new layer called vignette and by playing with the opacity of this layer you can adjust how strong the effect shows.

Vignette CS2
This action only runs with CS2 or higher. It creates a soft, large vignette effect completely automatic.

Real Film Grain:
I shot on film for many years and loved the typical film grain look. This action will add a film grain layer that looks like a real film, not some digital noise. The action comes in color and B&W. I recommend to add the film grain before you resize the photo to a smaller size. Ideally you add film grain to the original size photo as a last step of your processing.

FlushMEM
Photoshop uses a lot of memory (RAM) but some of it is wasted and could be used better. This action will free up some memory. Use it if you feel PS is running slow because it is running out of memory. Just keep in mind that it "flushes" the undo buffer and history as well as the "clipboard".

Flatten:
just a quick and simple button to flatten a layered photo. Once you ran an action and tweaked it, use this to flatten.

dark edge H & V
these two actions add a dark edge around photos. Similar to the vignette effect but more defined. Use "H" for horizontal photos and "V" for vertical ones.

To sRGB
This simple action converts the color profile from whatever you use to sRGB. I use this all the time before I save out images that are going to be in a slide show or on line.

500/800_Horizontal & Vertical
These actions resize a photo to a reasonable size for web publishing. "H" is for horizontal photos, "V" for vertical photos. 500 means it will resize the horizontal or vertical side to 500 pixel, 800 will make it 800 pixel. 800 is usually a good size for web publishing. 500 is the size flickr uses as a standard size.

frame H & frame V
these two actions are very similar to the web actions, except they add a nice white border around the photo.





Tips and Tricks that will help you using these actions:

Almost all actions have a "flatten" command as a first step. This was a request from some of my testers and it might indeed be useful. Personally I often work with different layers and combine actions and don't want to flatten when I run a new action. So I added the command in each action, but I check it off . If you like to have the photo flattened when you run the actions, just check the "flatten" command on in the action.




How to work with Layer Masks:
What are Layer Masks for anyway? We all know how we can adjust the effect on a layer by adjusting the opacity. This is very helpful, but as we adjust it always affects the entire image. What if you really like the effect an action has created overall except on the face where it is just too much. This is where the layer mask becomes useful. By painting on the layer mask you can reduce the opacity of a layer in some areas only. In our example you would paint the areas of the face on the layer mask and thus reducing it only there.

One thing confusing about painting on layer masks is that you don't see your actual paint strokes. You only see the result of the layer becoming more or less visible in these areas. It's like painting with invisible paint.
It's also a little confusing whether the layer itself is selected or the layer mask.

If you click on the layer icon the layer gets selected and a small white border is visible around the icon. You can also see that in the title bar of your photo:


If you click on the mask icon of that layer it will get a small white border and the title bar will also tell you that the mask is selected.


In other words, watch for the little border and title bar to avoid confusion.

If you really want to see the layer mask, hold the [Alt] key and click on the layer mask icon. The mask will now become visible as a gray scale image. To return to your normal viewing mode, again, hold the [Alt] key and click on the mask icon again.


Some tips painting layer masks
As mentioned before it's a good idea to use a large and very soft brush to paint layer masks. This will create smoother transitions between the areas you painted out and the rest. The harder the mask the more likely you'll see a transition in the photo. Here is how to set up the brush:


When you use a brush the most common things you want to change are the opacity and brush size. Always going back into the brush settings takes time. Here are some hot keys that will speed it up.
The bracket keys " [ " and " ] " adjust the brush size. Hit " ] " on the keyboard to increase the brush size, use " [ " to decrease the brush size.

The opacity can easily be set by just using the number keys on your keyboard. Hit 1 and the opacity is 10%, 2 = 20%, 3 = 30%, and so on. 0 = 100%.

Remember "white reveals, black conceals". All layer masks are 100% white by default. To paint areas out you need to use black as foreground color. If you accidentally painted too much, just paint with white to fix these areas again. Instead of setting the foreground color back and forth all the time I recommend this: Set the foreground color to black and the background color to white. Now you can just hit " x " on the keyboard to swap foreground & background color out! This way you can instantly change from black to white as you paint.