By Zack Davis, http://www.photographyconnect.com
A little over a month ago I got the luck to meet Jeffrey Mcintyre via Yahoo Messenger (http://www.digital-expressions.net/) through my friend Betsy Finn (http://www.learnwithbetsy.com). In speaking with him I learned he created some workflow actions and was estatic when Jeffrey asked me to take a look at them. Now something I thought might take a few hours has turned into over a month, but all for good reason.
No matter if you’re new to photoshop, have a few years under your belt or are an old pro; some of these actions are things I hadn’t even considered creating actions for or just plain have not taken the time to create them. The best part in my opinion is that the actions don’t force your images to look like something that isn’t your style. Most of the actions come in multiple flavors ranging from standard or half tone to dramatic allowing them to be useful to low, mid and high contrast lovers alike. Non-destructive is a key phrase I and many others love to hear and I’m happy to say these actions accomplish just that, most of the actions will automatically create a layer mask so that you can add and remove without causing damage to the image.
The price tag is honestly a bargain in my opinion in the month since I have been using his actions I can see the difference in my retouching speed. It’s easy to forget the value of time in this business and the value of a fast computer, time saving actions and a good lab can all add up at the end of the year into hours and hours of extra time we never knew we existed.
Normally when I see some new actions I’m not impressed because honestly they can show a cool effect or say they “know” the proper way to convert black and white. In the end I find a lot of actions to be bland regurgitations of eachother that at times can make print comps look just as bland and regurgitated. I wasn’t really walking into these actions with that mindset but I also hadn’t set my expectations high. But and it’s a big but, these actions aren’t anything cheesey, regurgitated or even mass produced cookie cutter effects. Simply put the Portrait Enhancement Action Set is a brilliant, simple and downright useful set of actions that most every photographer will find a valuable addition to their actions.
If you’re interested in any of the actions that Digital Expresssions has to offer visit their website http://www.digital-expressions.net
Betsy Finn has also done a great write up about these actions and non-destructive editing on her website which can be found here
