I love and can get lost in the creative alchemy of Photoshop, but I generally don’t have a lot of patience when it comes to editing my own photos. If my shots don’t look darn good out of camera, I ruthlessly abandon them in my Lightroom library, because honestly, I’d rather be shooting than editing. We’ve been sharing with you how easy our Foto Rx actions are to use, and how perfect they are for the beginner who wants to harness the capabilities of Photoshop without feeling overwhelmed, but I have found myself turning to Foto Rx for my own edits more and more, even though I know my way around Photoshop pretty darn well. What it comes down to is simply workflow efficiency. If I can get my edits buttoned up with one click instead of 3, why wouldn’t I?
Take these peonies for example. I made this photo when the flowers started to wilt a bit. I was thrilled with the looseness of the petals, and the composition, but not the sickly yellow tinge of the formerly white petals. So, as you can guess – it was quarantined in Lightroom, never to be heard from again – until we started running tests with Foto Rx. I pulled the image into Photoshop, opened our Foto Rx : First Aid Kit actions set, applied Feeling Yellow adjusted the opacity to 90%, then flattened the image and applied 20/20 Vision, adjusting the opacity on that to 70%, and was done. In less than 1 minute, those petals became pearly white and sharp as a tack, transforming my forgotten floral into a print-worthy piece.
Shot with Canon 6D
Edited with Foto Rx : First Aid Kit
P.S. Are there ever too many flower photos? Seriously – I need your opinion. I’m trying not to overstuff my Instagram account with flower images, but when spring hits and the flowers are going gangbusters, it’s hard not to want to photograph every single one!
Miss Michelle P. is a photographer, and the co-creator of Foto Rx Premium Photoshop Actions. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. Her muse is light.
Amazing!
I concur! I actually watched her edit another floral today and it was a ‘one click wonder’. We were both squealing ‘it’s like magic!’, it really is, especially when time is such a premium and what we all want to be doing is something else other than editing (besides myself who could edit all day, but I’m obviously an outlier/weirdo, hah). Thank you for your visit + kind words!
I had to laugh (and comment) when I saw your P.S. about the flower photos taking over your Instagram–I can’t stop with the flower photos! I had a friend ask me today, where do you live because it looks like it is all rainbows and flowers. I recently moved to Oregon from Minnesota, and every flower (tree, mountain, ocean…) is so photogenic. Know you have another flower-obsessed Instagram-er out there! P.S. I hadn’t heard of Foto Rx before, but I will be checking it out now!
I totally understand about everything in the PNW being so photogenic, even the moss is gorgeous:) Are you enjoying Oregon? Did you move to Portland? Seems like Portland is the ‘it’ place right now!