I was super excited when I saw Eduardo Recife had introduced a new font, he is one of my favorite graphic designers, I have watched his career bloom from just a few free (but very awesome) fonts to a whole collection of premium font offerings. He has a very distinct aesthetic and has a unique ability to utilize ephemera in his collages without them ever looking dated. Eduardo has always been very generous with creating and offering free tools, like these amazing grunge Photoshop brushes. I love an artist that shares (sharing is caring) and if you like his fonts too, it would be wonderful to support this talented fellow. You can get his new fonts Mercy & King Bloser here, both are elegant and would work well in anything from wedding to web.
P.S. I used the new Color Mute Photoshop action for the next Foto Rx set (launching March 1st!) on the graphic above, I love it. I always tone the colors down on my graphics and images for this site, because I prefer a more subtle palette, it usually would take me more time than I have, so one click and having it done makes me a very happy girl!
We hope you all had a wonderful weekend, we certainly did! It’s such a rush to launch something that you worked so hard on and we are learning so much in the process. One of the things we knew we had to learn was how to do a screencast. Both Michelle and I kind of groan at the sound of our voices (although I personally think Michelle’s is rather lovely). I do think it’s a common irk for a lot of people, so we had to overcome that obstacle, but since we would do pretty much anything for you we decided to dive right in!
There wasn’t a lot of information in a straightforward way on how to actually do the screencast but we did find a helpful Skillshare class. We originally used Quicktime to record our video’s (it’s a screenrecording application that comes free with Mac’s). We have since downloaded Screenflow, but be forewarned if you are working with multiple individuals on a project like we are, the price is only good for one license, meaning only the person that bought it and downloaded it can use it on their computer. We did learn a great tip in our class and that is to use your Iphone headphones that comes with the Iphone as your mic. I had a little trouble with mine (there’s a strange sucking noise in my video recordings) but Michelle’s sounds super clear and so pro! We also learned that you can edit and create videos in Photoshop, this is a revelation to me (our promo video is basically a layered Photoshop file!). Being able to edit videos in Photoshop is amazing, because you’ll be able to apply your actions to your video, how’s that for spiffy?
Above is our latest screencast Michelle recorded to demonstrate our Foto Rx Photoshop actions ‘One Click Wonders’. I do feel being able to see her work with the actions and the effect they have on the image as she goes has so much more impact than still images. Once you see the actions in action, we hope it gets you excited to try them out so you can see just how easy (and fast) it is to use them!
I am sure you have heard the collective sigh straight through your screen that both Michelle and I have let out now that our Foto Rx | First Aid Kit photoshop actions have finally been released into the wild! It has only taken us 3 years to do this, we had originally created a version of them for our Food + Foto class and had great feedback, but we figured it was just for our students. Fast forward a couple years later and the uber talented + creative Ez Pudewa formerly of Creature Comforts (and now of the darling Petit Pippin), asked me if they were available for sale, I mentioned it to Michelle and we both thought it was a good idea, (I mean if Ez liked them!), but then we must have saw something shiny because we were off doing one of our many other projects once again. The thing is we do a lot of photo editing around these parts, we shoot for the blog, we have shot commercially (a book cover!), now with my baby I shoot like I’m the paparazzo, we shoot in every kind of lighting condition and truth be told not all the images come s.o.o.c. (that’s photographer speak for ‘straight out of camera’) looking as ideal as we would have envisioned and time after time we went back to our little Foto Rx action set and were able to achieve the desired results in mere clicks. We knew the time had come to share our little secret with the world, make photo editing a lot easier, less daunting and dare I say fun?
Once we put our minds to something, Michelle and I become laser focused and maybe (just maybe) I get a little obsessive. We earned what Michelle has dubbed our ‘PsD’s’ by basically putting the original set on steroids and adding actions we wish we had prior (learning a ton along the way). We are calling it our Foto Rx | First Aid Kit, it will have everything you need to get your dull and lifeless photos to come back to life. We should put in a disclaimer here and add that some images just can’t be saved, we call these D.O.A. (that’s death on arrival), those are the images that have zero information in them (it’s so overexposed as to have become white and no information can be mined).
We know a lot of you that may be interested in the First Aid Kit might not have a ton of Photoshop experience, I did round up these tutorials for you and Michelle and I have been working on more tutorials that we will be uploading shortly (we will be doing a workflow edit on an image so you can see how we use them). We hope that with the links and the 25 page pdf that comes with the set that it will help get you started and build your Photoshop confidence. We will be answering questions of course both from our shop and in the comments below, but we thought we might get ahead of some of the questions that may come up:
What are Photoshop actions?
Simply put they are recorded tasks that you can ‘play’ in Photoshop (in the actions palette) that will automate your editing work flow. Our First Aid Kit Photoshop actions assist with ‘recovery and healing’ getting your images back from being sickly to stunners. We soon will be adding the ‘cosmetic surgery’ aspect to actions which will enhance your photos even further.
Will the Foto Rx Photoshop actions work for Photoshop Elements or Lightroom?
Unfortunately, they will not. We will be bringing you Lightroom presets of the actions soon though!
Do I need Photoshop to use your Foto Rx Photoshop actions?
Yes, you will. It is not an app (yet!) nor is it a stand alone application, we need Photoshop to run them.
Are Photoshop actions magic?
No, they are not, but they certainly can be magical!
I don’t have an English version of Photoshop, can I use your actions?
Maybe. They are made for the English version only, but Photoshop does have an options preference to change your language to English. Of course if you don’t speak English this could pose a problem.
My sharpening action isn’t working!
We recommend using sharpening as the finishing touch on your image. Flatten your previous layers, or make sure you have the photo layer you’d like sharpened highlighted before you run any sharpening actions.
I ran an action and my photo isn’t perfect, what the what?
Sometimes you may need to increase the strength of your ‘prescription’ by running the cure more than once. If that still doesn’t work, try another remedy. If that doesn’t work make sure your photo isn’t D.O.A. and is just too poor a quality to mine information from (either pitch black, or bright white). We currently can’t make a super blurry image crystal clear, but we are working on some ‘cosmetic surgery’ actions that may make that super blurry photo look incredibly cool (so don’t toss it just yet!)
P.S. We are launching on Valentine’s day because we know you are going to LOVE our actions! We created a Valentine’s inspired mini set for everyone lovely enough to sign-up for our launch, it’s not too late to be our pen pal and get the mini set free (Foto Rx Loves You). you can sign-up here!
Miss Tristan B. is the proprietress of Besotted Brand and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. She lives in sunny Seattle with her handsome husband, wonderful baby girl and two pups. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository and to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.
A little bird (aka Miss Michelle) sent me a note this morning that this gorgeous font was on sale! Who am I to resist a beauty such as this? Another amazing offering from Sudtipos!
Yesterday I posted this lettering on Instagram and thought it might make a good Photoshop brush, I made two versions, both available for free to download (Valentine’s day is right around the corner after all). We are still hoping to launch our Foto Rx Photoshop actions this week and I have been a bit frantic, Michelle on the other hand is cool as a cucumber whilst the top of my head keeps popping off and steam escapes cartoon style. I am hoping to get back to a more dignified demeanor soon. I am just so darn excited, it’s the first big thing I have done since baby E. arrived and it’s making me feel like I am finally starting to get a groove going. I have felt so inept at adding any other task other than mother to my plate. I seriously don’t know how mom’s around the globe do it, it took me over a year to finally get anything done!
The photo above was edited with Foto Rx (but of course), the front most flower was suffering from overexposure so I used ‘paint on dark’ to bring back detail in the petals, if this had gotten to bright white on the overexposure mark, nothing short of time travel and taking the photo again would bring the detail back, all white overexposure means there isn’t any data to mine, thus rendering any remedy completely useless. We have included a few bonus film effect actions for you in the set, I used Matte+ a few times to get that muddy/foggy film look that is currently so popular and added film grain. The effect also helped me add my Photoshop lettering brush over the photograph without there being too much competing detail, a cool ‘trick’ to use when you want to add text to your photographs for your blog.site, Instagram, etc. Have any burning questions? Now is the time to ask them, always best to leave us comments, because it’ll be much faster to get your answers than via the abyss known as my email account.
P.S. This was shot with my Iphone, it was one of a series (I did get in one decent photo), it was an image I thought was a goner until I ran it through a Foto Rx remedy, so if you are wondering if you can edit Iphone images, the answer is yes, if you have a high enough res image!
Author / Miss Tristan B
Miss Tristan B. is the proprietress of Besotted Brand and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. She lives in sunny Seattle with her handsome husband, wonderful baby girl and two pups. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository and to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.
