High school summer jobs. My friend Nanette always tried to convince me to be life guard with her, my pasty white skin was always jealous of her nice tan. We both worked at Lagoon, a local amusement park, she worked in the glowing sunlight of the water park and I spent my summer in the red hue of the darkroom at the Old Fashioned Photo Parlor. It was awesome! They had a dark room and large format cameras. Needless to say I was hooked. A couple years ago my friend Michelle wanted her little sister to have my same job at Lagoon. Through her I learned that they had gone digital, as has most of the world. Photoshop has become the darkroom of digital photography. My schooling at BYU taught me both. I always felt like I knew my way around the darkroom and around Photoshop. Until lately…. Since shooting more and more weddings I find myself around more and more photographers. A couple weeks ago I found myself having this conversation.

her, “What actions do you use?”
me, “Actions?”
her, “You know actions, you use them in Photoshop. You know what Photoshop is, right.”
me….please don’t make me punch you, “Yeah, I know what Photoshop is.”
her, “you know you use them on your Photographs and they do cool things. Like I really want this action that does…..”
me, “oh, I guess I just do that in Photoshop.”

So I decided that I had better figure out what actions were and how to use them. Once I saw what they were and how to make them I decided to make my own. Bellow is an action that I made. I actually like to use actions now. If any other photographer out there doesn’t know what an action is, like I didn’t, I would love to chat and get you up to speed. For the rest of you feel free to download my action for free. Check back regularly for more actions. I hope to do a post once a week with a free action, so follow my blog (add me at the bottom of this page) and don’t miss out.

You can scroll over the photo below to see the action “in action.”