Photoshop Edits

There are hundreds of thousands of Photoshop actions, effects and tutorials on the web today. The problem is, most of the time the developer does not show the result of their effect or tutorial. I will show you what a picture looks like before and after the action or effect is performed on a photograph or graphic, as well as links to download the action or effect, or visit the tutorial.

What is a Photoshop Action? Click here for an overview on what a Photoshop Action is.

Comes with 3 styles: Comix (plain), Halftone, and Hue. Use the plain comix action and a paintbrush to easily add custom color fills. Image size effects details so it works best on images of 1000 to 2000 pixels across.

Download Action

Pros: Awesome to have three variations of the action, result is good

Cons: Outlines are a little thick, not very smooth final image

If you haven’t signed up to use Adobe Photoshop Express, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! As long as your computer can handle the weight, this is a great FREE resource to modify/fix/enhance/play with your pictures. All that, and it’s fun and easy to use. I myself give this “application” five stars, and definitely recommend it to anyone that is in the mood to play around with their pictures, but not in the place financially to purchase Adobe Photoshop.

What is Photoshop Express? Well, it’s basically Photoshop, online. You can tweak, rotate, edit and show off photos on your free Photoshop Express, Flickr, or Facebook page. They give you 2 gigabytes to store your photos, for free. You can upload your own pictures and edit them online through your browser. Yes, it’s that simple.

So I imported one of my photos of my three sons and tried out the Sketch effect that’s available on the Photoshop Express online app. Here is the resulting image next to the original:

Adobe Photoshop Express Online

Pros: Free(!!!), easy to use and understand, simple effects, make something out of the same old photos

Cons: Limited (but what can you do, it’s free!)

For better results use a picture with light colors in the background.

Download Action

Pros: Great effect, very realistic coloring

Cons: Doesn’t result with all photos, must choose a few before ending up with the desired effect

Here’s a great trick for creating a floating border from within your digital photograph. This technique will also be great practice for desaturating, selecting, and linking layers.

Watch Tutorial

Pros: This is a great way to distinguish areas or people in a busy or even a “large” photo.

Cons: None in my experience.

Old Film v1.0 gives any image that old-time film look and feel — you know, scratchy, hairy, dusty! Looks great on sepia tone images, but works on all. Each time is random as well. Created by J.Wilker. www.moonpost.com

Download Action

Pros: Great effect with a vintage photo, very realistic, looks good with a prior sepia effect.

Apply a rather impressive photo-realistic 3D photo cube effect to any image.

Download Action

Pros: Realistic shadow to compliment the photo box, nice clean background in final effect

Cons: None found

Holga is a cult toy camera with plastic lens and case. This cheap camera use 120 film and made marvelous fuzzy photos with drop-off around the edges, light leaks… This action try to simulate the strange characteristic look of photo shooted with Holga.

Download Action

Pros: Does what it says, nice effect

Cons: Crops the picture, so be ready to lose some of the photo

The B&Big Picture combines two of my popular actions: the versatile “Big Picture” action with the eye-catching B&B techniques. At the end your image is turned to a very impressive collage made up by 25 different photos. 

Download Action

Pros: Very realistic effects like bends and shadows, many options once initial effect is run, clean.

Cons: None noticed.

Variations: 1 | 2 | 3

This is my first action and a nice artistic one giving the illusion that your photo is half-real, half-drawn. Don’t be fooled by cheap immitations!

Download Action

Pros: Nice sketch effect, great option to brush out the sketched areas you would like to show.

Cons: None noticed.

PanosFX has some amazing free and commercial plugins and actions. Here is one called Discrete 1.

Discrete 1