Milk & Cookies: 90% Increase Contrast by 10

Unlike many things (um, Jersey Shore), the hype surrounding the Totally Rad Photoshop Actions are completely justified. They do amazing things in photoshop, and really all it takes is pushing the play button for your computer to go off and running. All you have to do at the end of running an action is decide whether you like it and also decide whether you want it as is, or whether you want to tone down the effect by decreasing the percentage opacity of the effect in the layers pane. It’s too much fun, and you can definitely go a bit overboard, like the leopard looking striped cat version below, but if you use a light hand and remember that less is more, the actions definitely add to your images while saving a ton of time.

Here are some versions of the same photograph (any excuse to post a Kashi the cat picture!) with the Actions Recipe below it.  Even more recipes are located on the Totally Rad Actions located here.  If you’ve never used actions before, they have a great, easy to understand tutorial on how to use and install the actions located here.

Here is the original:

Here are the photos with some actions applied, the recipe is below the photo:

60% bullet tooth. 40% fade winter

bullet tooth: 60%. Pool Party: 60%. Can of whoopass 8 (over the cat): 80%. Red channel fix: 50%

POS Lens: 100%. Dirty and Used Up Texture: 100%. Get Faded: 40%.

The last photo has texture applied, which is an interesting effect.  It’s definitely not right for every photo, but textures seem to add an interesting artsy effect.  In doing some textures research, I found a site by ShadowHouse Creations which provides really great textures…for free!