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Actions Using Photoshop Actions - Cheating?


ElizabethM

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In the opinion of all you fancy Photoshop experts, while some actions can be really helpful and take away the long tedious process of putting together and image my question is: Do you think it's cheating or that it takes the fun out of editing your own image? Or in your opinion is it a good starting base to maybe form a nice base effect that you can edit into your own effect?
 

Tom Mann

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Not that I'm opinionated or anything, but IMHO, the answer is clearly and emphatically, "NO".

AFAIC, anything that helps me chew through images more quickly is more than welcome. The only thing that matters is the quality of the final product that the client sees. How you obtained that is between you and your maker.

Of course, if you hand over an album of 300 images to a wedding client and you have used the exact same action on all the images, your final product stinks and the word will get around.

However, if you mix things up, modify commercial actions to suit each image, etc., and each image looks good and the set looks coherent, you're doing your job.

Just my $0.02,

Tom M
 

ElizabethM

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Brilliant reply Tom, thank you! I was actually hoping that the answer to that question would lean more towards "let it help you create a base" because also IMO I sometimes just can't seem to come up with the right colour, texture or effect. If a good texture can help me reach that, then brilliant. But I feel like as every image is not a 100% alike, there's always need to tweak here and there. So what makes it a cheat is if you just use the actions and not fix it to fit the image.

I hope that's the right track of thinking. And I also now have to go stock up on my action gallery. The last time I updated it was back when I first started using Photoshop at the age of 13 and needed tons of useless (with really extravagant and bad effects) actions for myspace edits. Oh the horror!!
 

Tom Mann

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Hi Elizabeth - After reading your sentence, "...And I also now have to go stock up on my action gallery...", I realized that we probably are not talking about the same thing. The title of this thread is about actions, in general, whereas I'm starting to think that you are really asking about actions that have been developed by someone else, eg, commercial actions that one purchases.

I use actions that I've developed for myself with some frequency, but I almost never use actions developed by someone else. In fact, I haven't had any commercial actions installed on my machine for the last several generations of PS.

The reasons are:

(a) I always wind up needing tweak actions developed by others to fit each image to which I want to apply that action. The time it takes me to tweak someone else's action is just about the same, if not longer than the time it takes me to develop an action for myself, from scratch, that does exactly what I want, right out of the starting gate.

(b) In the last 5 or so years, the actions that I develop for myself have tended to be for mundane tasks like adding a thin keyline just inside the border of an image, or stacking together several different layer effects (...which can now be done without actions in PS CC 2015), or producing several different sizes of a particular image, etc., BUT NOT for color and tonality type changes, which, historically were always the most popular type of commercial actions.

(c) Lightroom's wonderful management of ACR presets and the convenience LR brings to the process of exporting an image to various types and sizes of files, as well as all the options it offers for printing has dramatically reduced my need for actions within PS to perform such tasks.


Another question that could be asked is whether I think people starting out in the photography business and post processing should rely on commercial actions. My answer to that is, "no". The reason for this is that since one almost always has to tweak a commercial action to get the best out of it, the novice Photoshopper has to know whether he/she should adjust the opacity or other parameters of one step, of several steps, introduce other steps, etc. etc. If he/she doesn't know exactly what to do, they'll never get the best out of commercial actions. If you don't have these skills, the novice Photoshopper will be reduced to going through long lists of actions just to find one that works well on a particular image. You won't learn anything from this process except the obscure names of the commercial actions that you own. OTOH, if you develop a deep knowledge of fundamental PS skills, it will be your choice whether you want to tweak someone else's action or just make a new one up for yourself whenever needed.

So, to reiterate the answer to your initial question about actions, in general, I will use *anything* that speeds up my work including actions (both commercial and my own), other software (eg, Lightroom), and most importantly, plugins and plugin suites like NIK's Color Efx Pro, all the wonderful Topaz plugins, etc.

I hope that clarifies my answer.

Best regards,

Tom M
 

ElizabethM

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Thank you Tom, that definitely clarifies your answer. I can see your point of view in what you said. I've always been a little torn at the idea of using commercial actions. On one hand it allows me to create colour schemes and effect I still have no idea how to create, one the other hand it also takes away the learning process of how to make those effects and in the end makes me lazy. So while I think (personally at least) it could be a cool stepping stone to learn HOW (by looking at the layers and seeing what can be tweaked), I get how from your point of view it also doesn't really help the person define themselves as their own designer. I hope I followed your trail of thought accurately.

As for creating your own actions, that's really cool! As a new designer, do you think it's something I should learn to do now or later when I have more work on my hand? :)
 

Tom Mann

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Yup, I think we are on the same wavelength.

WRT creating your own actions, I think that the more natural course would be to wait to do so until you have your chops down pat and are so bored with doing the same things over and over again, then start to learn how to roll your own actions.

Just my $0.02,

Tom M
 

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