Lights, Camera, Actions!

Right now I'd like to thank my husband for "helping me" (i.e. doing it himself then showing me how) install actions into PSE 7 on our Mac which runs Windows through Fusion. (It's complicated.) He did it with minimal cursing (none at me) and no corporal punishment on the computer, so he deserves a big hand. Or cookies.

So I finally got some actions installed, and am ready to play! I first got the Pioneer Woman sets of free actions loaded. Here are some of the things I played around with:

This is the photo I took yesterday--I've wanted to take this photo all summer! It's a little dark, and the sun's through the leaves, but I love it. Look how happy he is. First I used Boost and Slight Light:


I also tried Fresh Color and Soft Faded. I really like this one:

This one looks magical to me.

I also discovered that I love Coffee Shop actions as well. Boy, if you take the time to click on links, you find gems. That's what I did yesterday when we were stuck inside in our second of three major thunderstorms that dumped 5 inches of rain on us. I clicked a link on a blog (forgot where now) and ended up finding her actions--awesome! Here's a photo I took the other day when it wasn't storming, my boys building mountains in the wet sand of the playground in between storms:


And here I used Vignette:


I changed the opacity so the burn could be seen better. Sort of gives the photo an explorer look. And just for photography's sake, I was almost on sand-level for the photo. It makes for an interesting angle.

Here's why I wanted actions in the first place: I rediscovered some old photos of my husband when closet cleaning this summer. I wanted to use actions to play around with the photos a little. Take, for example, this precious one taken of my husband's family when they lived in Hawaii, those lucky dogs:


And here is PW Boost:


Coffee Shop Attic Vintage:


PW Colorized:

I'm still figuring out how to save the actions to the desired folder--and make them show up when I open the actions!--so I'll keep playing and having fun.