Actions for Photoshop / Lightroom / Elements

It's no secret that I love applying special effects to my photos whether it be through using actions, presets or applying textures and overlays! I am an absolute pack rat of these!! The nice thing about them is that they can also be used just to enhance a photo either dramatically or in a more subtle fashion. Another two wonderful things about them is they save on processing time and you can easily find so many freebies to choose from!

Here is a freebie that I really like that I want to share. It is to improve the contrast in your image by increasing the underexposed areas and decreasing the overexposed areas. Yes, it is like dodge and burn, only better! IMO, it looks more natural. This comes in handy for me when shooting outdoors using available light. This action can be used in Photoshop and Elements.

http://www.mcpactions.com/toltod.html

If anyone else has freebie favorites that they would like to share that would be great!

I have two actions I use a lot. One is a simple high pass filter and one is a LAB color curve adjustment. Both are useful in certain situations and not at all in others, but they're easy enough to use and then discard if I don't like the effect. I'd be happy to post them here if I could figure out how to do it.

You could post them as steps rather than an actual file if you want. Doing steps takes longer for you, but when the folks use that to record their own action, it might give them a better idea of what's going on and possibly improve upon it or just build their confidence.