NEW BLOG!!

We're LIVE On the new blog!!!

PLEASE UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS!

NEW BLOG HERE.... IT'S LIVE!!!

Ohhhh yeah......

Almost forgot about today!

I am so excited, I have a very talented web designer who is making a rockin new template for the blog. I'll be transitioning over to wordpress when it is finished, so that the blog can be hosted on my own webspace. She's also matching the store to the blog, so it will be a seamless transition between the two. I can't wait to see it!

I also had Trish (Blue Fire Multimedia) design a few more blog/graphics for me, I just LOVE them! (She created the current blog header/graphics as well)

 Here's a sneak of what the new blog header will look like for Fall:

Ahhhhhhhhhh the cuteness is too much!!

Anyway,  I just needed to share my excitement. I'm hoping that will all be done this week, we'll see.  So.. how bout I share a few pics? Okay, good idea :)

First two are just some client pictures I was proofing this week. Just to show that I DO use these actions in my day to day workflow. That's how I started making the actions. I created them for myself, then figured I might as well see if anyone else could use them!

This picture was taken by Bonnie (Once Remembered Action Templates), it's her gorgeous 13 year old Daughter. I'm always bugging Bonnie on IM, so snagged this pic and messed with it.

And in case you aren't on any of the photography boards I frequent and missed this freebie, I put up a Softy Bleach action over the weekend just for fun. I uploaded it to the store (go to STORE and Freebies) 

The Bleach will just be up this week, so don't miss it. There's also still the Choco Coco Mocho (what was I thinking when I named that one??), the S-Curve, and the Artist Fave Brush in the Freebies section.

Oh, and before I forget, this weekend's winner......... Kaosong! 

Email me at info@phauntactions.com to claim your prize :)

And last thing, I promise.. Wanted to share this cool link:

I got up to about 1500 grains before my brain gave out. I can't seem to keep my vocab level above 34 though.

Go play and let me know what your score/level is! :)

Freebie Friday 11/9 S-Curves Made Easy

Today I'm doing a quick tutorial (under 5 minutes, that's gotta be a record!) on how to create an S-Curve. You may have heard of this referenced before, it's  a pretty basic and essential technique for manipulation in photoshop, so you've gotta get this down and know how to do it yourself!

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

It's a short one, I promise!

After watching the video, go to the STORE and download the quick S-Curve action from the Freebie's section.

I'm also going to leave up the Choco Coco Mocho action, because I've gotten a lot of feedback on it and it's such a basic action I'd like to leave it up for anyone to grab if they want. So be sure to snag that one too if you haven't gotten it already.

Remember to leave me a comment.. this week's winner will get a $35 gift certificate to the store!! Have a good weekend!

Tuesdaylicious

Happy Tuesday! How about a great coupon?

Use the code: tday1 in the store now thru Thursday and you can get $15 off any action set :)

Meggan sent me this great Before/After from her new Beautifiers set.. I love to see the set used to enhance natural beauty.. this girl was already gorgeous, the actions just helped put the finishing touches on the photo. Thanks for sharing Meggan!

I really love sharing pics that you guys are using the actions on, it shows that you don't have to be a PS guru to use them effectively. Honestly I usually end up liking your examples much better than mine!

A few links today.. This one is a personal friend of mine, Melanie. I've known her for going on 5 years now from the "Mommy Board" days, she has a son that is just a day younger than Lilly! She has a great blog about saving money and being thrifty.

The Adventures of Frugal Girl

Check her out and save a few bucks!

And ProPhotogs is having a great special right now on membership, only $50!! Usually the membership is $150! It's a great forum for info and inspiration if you're looking to learn more about photography and the business side of it.

Cold Monday

I'm late on this, I know, sorry about that! I have been so stinking busy these last few weeks. We are going to the inlaws for Thanksgiving and I'm hoping to be done with portrait clients before then, so after Thanksgiving things will calm down a bit and I can do a few things I've been putting off on the blog. I've got some great things in the works though, I can't wait to get it all done and going.

Anyway, on a personal note, Sam and I went to the 232nd Marine Corps Ball on Saturday. The Marine Corps birthday is actually on November 10th, but they have a Veteran's Day parade they had scheduling conflicts with so we got to go a week early. I always look forward to the ball because it's the one time a year I get to get a purty dress and get all dolled up. I'm pretty much the anti-thesis of anything "girly", but I secretly do enjoy doing it every once in awhile.

This year I actually went and had my hair "did" by my hair dresser, I haven't had it done since my wedding, can you believe it? I'm a very low maintenance person, my #1 requirement for a haircut is that it is easy to fix and will take me a maximum of 3 minutes to do.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few pics from Saturday..

Me with my done Did hair:

Me and my Marine :)

Sam was on sword detail, and I wanted to get some pics of it, but the light in the room was horrible. I didn't bring a flash, and already felt like a bit of a dork with my monster camera and huge lens, so I just made do with what I had. Cranked the ISO up to 1600 and kept it at 1/30th, and just prayed I got a few shots!

  

So, that's where I was this weekend. Sorry to those who I didn't return emails, I'm trying to take the weekend off from working. I have a bad habit of working ALL THE TIME, and it's been driving my family crazy, so I have self-imposed work hours now that I'm trying to stick to.. we'll see how that goes. LoL

Oh yeah, winner of the Actions?

I'm picking at random today.. and since my favorite number is 4, the 4th commenter wins it.. and that's Carla.. Email me at info@phauntactions.com to claim your prize :)

Tomorrow I'll be doing a post with a few quick tips and maybe a coupon or two, so be sure to check tomorrow.. Hope your week is starting out great! :) 

Freebie Friday 11/1

Can you believe it's November already? I swear I'm still not ready for it to be FALL, let alone Winter!

Before Freebie Friday, lets do yesterday's winners! The winner of the $25 gift certificate is... Erica! :) (email me at info@phauntactions.com to claim your prize)

And the winner of the $35 to Pink Ink Studios (I'm a bit jealous, I'd rather just use the $35 myself )

GEORGIA GOEKEN!

 

Congrats Gals.. Email me at info@phauntactions.com to claim your prize!!

Don't forget to visit Pink Ink studios today, they've got some great Blog Mixer fun going on every friday!

So.. On to Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeebie Friday!!

Today I'm going to be showing you how to quickly and easily apply a Brown tone to your B/W images. This method is easily adjustable, so that you can apply as much or as little as you want. Today's tutorial is really quick, so I'm just going to do it via Screen Shots..

First off, convert your image to B/W. I’m going to do a quick Channel Mixer conversion (see THIS tutorial if you don’t know how to do that). You can use whatever b/w conversion method that you want. Just leave a little LESS contrast than you would normally do, we’ll add a bit with our brown tone, so we don’t want it to be too over the top.

So, we have our B/W image that looks like this:

 

We’ve done a quick B/W conversion and then flattened our layers. Next step is to create a NEW layer and fill it with the brown color that we want.

So go to LAYER-->NEW FILL LAYER --> SOLID COLOR

Press Okay on the next dialogue box, then pick a Brown tone, a darker one will work best. I chose this one, but you can play with the tone to find one that you like the best.

 

Press OK, and you will now have a brown filled layer covering up your image. To apply that brown tone to the image we have to change the blending mode of the fill layer.

Do that by going to your Layers palette and clicking the fly down menu and choosing one of the Blending modes:

For adding a tone, usually the OVERLAY or SOFT LIGHT blending modes work best, but you can experiment with them to find what you like. Basically what Photoshop is doing is going to take the Hue/Saturation/Lumination of the Fill layer and depending on what blending mode you pick it will apply it differently to the underlying layer (our image).

I’ve chosen Overlay for this image, but you can pick what looks best for yours. Then all you need to do is lower the opacity of the fill color layer to intensify/lower the effect. I’ve brought my opacity down to about 60%..

And.... VOILA!

It’s that easy!! All you have to do now is merge layers and maybe do some burning/dodging to bring the color out more. Remember, this works with any color, so don’t stick with browns, go crazy, try some purple, blue, red, whatever! Change your blending modes and opacity to get varied effects.

So this week's freebie is a quick B/W conversion action that will add a Brown tone to your image at the end. Also included is an action that will let you intensify/burn/deepen the color after it's applied.

Go to the Freebie's Section of the Store to get the Action!

Remember.. the freebie is only up for a week, so grab it now! And Leave me a comment, Will ya? Cus This weekend's comments winner will get the NEW Procrastination Pak as a prize!! Have a great weekend everyone!

Short and Sweet!

Busy busy day today.. so I gotta keep this one short!

Comments winner from yesterday.. Toni, for pointing out the fact that it wouldn't be very fun to have to have a visitor in the bathroom for a year. LoL!

(email me at info@phauntactions.com to claim your prize)

Here's a pic that Tiz (scrapolla) sent to show before/after using her new Beautifier set.. Thanks for letting me share Tiz! :)

The thing I like about the new Beautifiers set is that it's easy to do heavy and light retouching. This is a great example of how the set can be used to do subtle retouches.

The winner for the template set of their choice from Tina Parker is

Tonya Nicel!!

 

Congrats Tonya! Email me to claim your prize :)

Last day of winning.. Last prize we're giving away is a SUPER Gift certificate for $35 to Pink Ink Studios

They have adorable templates, very customizable, and some awesome photo mask borders as well. Be sure to check out the blog on Fridays when they have their mixers!

Good Luck everyone!