May 2008 Digital Group Meeting - Photoshop Actions & Plugins

Meeting Notes March 2009 to 2018.
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spb
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:04 pm

May 2008 Digital Group Meeting - Photoshop Actions & Plugins

Post by spb » Fri May 02, 2008 10:20 pm

We're approaching a 3 page Attendance List with 30 at the digital group this month.

QUESTION RECEIVED - should a Sony Trinitron CRT monitor be replaced?

On the positive side: traditional CRTs can produce very natural colour.
On the negative side: CRTs need more regular profiling. Focus, alignment and brightness can deteriorate over time.
I would recommend keeping a perfectly good monitor so long as it is capable of matching your prints and you have room for it on your desk.
When thinking of buying a TFT flat screen for photography always buy a good graphics-quality screen; Sony, Viewsonic, Liyama, Samsung or NEC are highly rated brands.
Have it profiled and ensure that you use it only at it's native resolution (Start>Control Panel>Display>Settings>Screen Resolution).

PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS

Actions are recordings of a series of Photoshop commands. They can be played back for one or many images and are a great way to speed up repetitive tasks. Actions are supported by all recent versions of Photoshop. Although not officially supported in Photoshop Elements, some pre-recorded Actions can be played. The Action to implement Layer Masks in Elements as covered in the digital group a couple of months ago is an example of this.

To record a new Action in Photoshop (not available in Elements), go to the Actions Palette and click on the Create New Action button, give it a name and then press Record. Perform the required commands and finally press the Stop button. Actions can be subsequently edited, amended or deleted via the Actions Palette and additional editing tools are in the Actions Palette drop down menu. To use the Action ensure that it is ticked and selected in the Actions palette and press Play Selection. To use it on multiple images, put them in a folder and run the Action on the whole folder via File>Automate>Batch.

There are several pre-recorded Actions supplied with Photoshop and more are available from the drop-down menu in the Actions Palette. Most of these are pretty crass and some don't appear to work. Tens of Thousands of Actions are available from the web - mostly free of charge. Try Googling "Photoshop Actions". Once again many are crass but Paul Mitchell recommends Action Central as a good resource. Actions are usually tiny files and are installed by simply dragging them to the Photoshop desktop.

I demonstrated a couple of impressive free actions from PanosFX Firstly, the B&Big Picture which divides an image into 25 small, slightly curled enprints. Secondly Panos FX Fan which creates a fan effect. I'm not sure what a judge would say about them but they got a round of applause!

If you need to produce display text, there are some very good text Actions around - you just have to hunt for them. I used such an action to produce the rounded chrome titles for the 2006 and 2007 exhibition AVs.

PHOTOSHOP PLUG-INS

Plug-ins are additional programs that can be added to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. When Photoshop loads it looks in a particular folder and simply lists everything that it finds there in the Filter Menu. Installation usually just involves putting one file (often suffixed .8BI or .8BF) in that particular folder and re-starting Photoshop.

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop XXX\Plug-Ins where XXX is your particular version of Photoshop.

Plug-ins can add considerable new functionality and may be quite sophisticated applications in their own right. Many Plug-ins come with Photoshop and Elements and are listed in the Filters menu. Filter>Render>Lighting Effects is an example of a complex plug-in.

Many thousands of Plug-ins are available on the web. Google "Photoshop Plugins". Many are free but because of their greater capability, many are priced commercially. Frustratingly I have found that many Plug-ins (and Actions) on the web are not adequately illustrated so it can be hard to judge if it's worth downloading them.

Some useful and fun examples demonstrated were;
Virtual Photographer which creates many pre-prepared image effects and simulates different film speeds
Kaleidoscope 2.1 which creates kaleidoscopic patterns
Plaid Lite which uses the colours from an image to create a custom tartan!

NEXT MEETING

After the summer break, the first Digital Group meeting of the 2008-9 season will be on 25th September 2008.

Any comments on the format and content of these meetings would be gratefully received.

Cheers, Steve.

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