Last year I relaunched my own site utilizing a premium WordPress theme and had a wonderful resonance to the change.  Over the winter and into the spring the number of stunning premium themes coming out from developers is nothing short of amazing, so when my former client Jeff hit me up about rebuilding his site, I was all for it.  Jeff owns and runs Sabotta Imagery, a Pennsylvania based photographer specializing in weddings, engagements and family shoots, he also happens to be a friend of mine.  I had originally set him up more then two and a half years ago with WordPress and a free theme, but it was time to take his website to the next level, one that was on par with his photography and that his clients would appreciate more.  Knowing his needs, I found the solution with ThemeSnack and their Phototastic premium theme. Continue reading »

One of the best things about Photoshop is the ability to automate tasks for a faster, more streamlined workflow. I’ve written a few for simple things I do often when post processing photography files, however there are thousands of other Photoshop users out there who write some amazing actions and give them away for free. The main resource for them is Action Central, home to hundreds of these actions.

A must download on the site are some of the black and white actions. I’ve done the digital black and white conversion just about every way you can, from using the channel mixer to just plain old convert to grayscale. I’ll be honest that doing digital black and white work can be one of the trickiest of all digital post processing for a photographer because of the options. With film, you choose the film based on how you want the output. Today, you shoot digital color and adjust after the fact. Action Central has several great black and white actions as well as a slew of sepias that are simply amazing.

Also worth checking out are the tutorials on the site, the Lomo actions and some of the really cool border actions that can really make your images pop.

The actions are easy enough to install, most can be simply drug into the actions pallet of Photoshop from your desktop after downloading.

Everything on the site is free; however there is a donation button on the home page. If you like the site and download some of the actions, consider throwing a few bucks to keep this great resource up and running.

Action Central