After a week here in Sydney, we’re taking off for San Francisco later today. We’ll leave here around 3 pm local time and arrive in San Francisco around 11 am local time, so it’ll be a L-O-N-G day.

Sydney is definitely a favorite place of mine. The people are very friendly, the ferries run on time, and the city is very clean. Pretty good food here, too.

Anyway, the photo up there is from my hotel room at dawn one morning. It didn’t really capture the orange and purple and blue of the sky.

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We’re outta here.

Packed everything up, passports in hand, iPod fully charged and loaded: I’m off to Sydney (followed by a few days in San Francisco) until August with Ms. Graffi.

I’ll still be checking emails and keeping an eye on the site, so don’t hesitate to contact me if you need to. I may not get back to you as quickly as I usually do, but I definitely will respond -

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This time, I’m going to show a few examples of how to use the 8 different Channels actions in Handy Actions 3. They’re all conveniently clustered together in the palette, under the Channels category. You’ll find actions for editing one of the three color channels (Red, Green and Blue), and few swap channels actions, plus a return to RGB editing and the popular Channels Mixer for creating Black & White images. It’s hopefully pretty obvious that channel editing is a pretty powerful way to correct some colors and get your photos looking their best with very little effort.

Let’s start with the three color channels actions Blue Channel, Green Channel and Red Channel (plus the RGB Channel action to return to “normal”). I’ll be using the sample image to the right for these examples. First, you should know that most images that come from your digital camera or scanner are RGB images - images comprised of three color channels: Reds, Greens & Blues. (hence, RGB). These three channels can be manipulated individually for great control over the look of the final image.

The Thumbnail up there shows the regular RGB image; the three images down the left side here show the individual channels that combine to create it - The Red channel on top, followed by the Green & Blue channels.  You can see that most of the noise present in the image comes from the Blue channel  (with less in the Green channel),

which makes it very easy to remove most of it. Simply run the Blue Channel action to isolate it and run one of the blur filters just enough to remove most of the noise.

I used the Noise>Reduce Noise filter on just the Blue channel, setting the Strength to 10 and the Preserve Details and Reduce Color Noise to 0, with Remove JPG Artifact ticked on. This took out quite a bit of the noise, but there was still a little too much in the Green channel, so I ran the same filter on that, reducing the Strength to 7.

The Red channel seemed just about right, but I wanted to boost the color in her lips and cheeks, so I painted just a bit with the Dodge tool, with Midtones selected in the options bar. This really brought out some nice red tones. 

A few more tweaks with cloning and spot blurring individual channels gave a very nice result. As a final touch, I ran the Photo-Polarize action.

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Now for some fun (although these actions can be used in a non-gimmicky / effecty kind of way). I ran the three swap channels actions for some interesting effects:

 


 

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Finally, I duplicated the image (using the Duplicate Image action) and flattened it. I wanted to experiment with the Channel Mixer action (which only works in Elements 5 - sorry, PSE 4 users).

I ticked on Monochromatic at the bottom of the dialog (to get a grayscale output) and played around a bit with mixing the channels to get a nice B&W image. I liked this setting so much, I clicked the Save button saved it so I can load it up the next time I want to use it - this is an awesome feature! I don’t have to recreate the same setting every time I want to adjust an image with about the same tonal range.

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Real quick download here for you Vista users - these are the actions below - all 20 of them - set up for your Vista system, with optional auto-generating thumbnails. Load thm into Add-O-Matic like usual, it’ll install them for you, and when you run them, you’ll be prompted to save a thumbnail example of the current image - so simple, even a caveman could do it.

If you are not using Vista, don’t download these actions! They are Vista-specific, so they’ll go a little funky when it comes time to save the thumb using XP or Mac.

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Download removed; look for them in Fun Foto FX 3

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I’vebeen meaning to do a little write up on all of the various actions in Handy Actions 3 ever since I put them out there awhile back, but somehow just never got around to it. Now, I’m getting around to it . I’m just going to start at the top of the effects list and explain each of the actions one by one, covering a few with each post, until I get to the bottom.

 This post will cover the five Layer Mask actions in Handy Actions:

The very first action icon you’ll see when you get to the Handy Actions is the good ‘ole Layer Mask icon. This one is the workhorse of the group, and is probably the one you’ll use more often than all of the 70 or so actions in this pack.

The action itself is really a “Layer Mask - Reveal All” action, since it will create a mask on a non-Background layer that shows (reveals) everything in the layer it’s created in. You’ll see a layer mask icon appear filled with white (this is important to remember: white shows everything in the layer the mask is connected to; black hides everything in the layer it’s connected to; shades of grey add degrees of transparency to the layer - the darker the grey, the more it shows).

*It’s also important to remember that layer masks do not work on Background layers. The point of a mask is to reveal or cover up layer(s) beneath it, and since there’s nothing beneath a Background layer, it would really be pointless. If you want to add a mask to a background layer, though, there are a few tricks: one is to simply duplicate the Background layer by either dragging it into the New Layer icon in the Layers palette (or run the “Duplicate Layer” action in Handy Actions) and then run the layer mask action on the copy, or make the layer editable by double-clicking the name “Background” in the layers palette and renaming it, which will essentially make it a non-background layer.

To use the Layer Mask, grab your paint brush and paint away. When the mask is the active part of the layer (i.e., the part you’re working on), you’ll see a black highlight box around its icon in the palette. Remember that White hides what’s beneath and black reveals what’s beneath (your colors will default to black and white when the mask is selected). You can also run some filters on masks, which creates some helpful and interesting possibilities. You can also unlock the mask from the layer it’s attached to by toggling on and off the little link icon between the layer & mask thumbnails. This allows you to move or transform either the mask or the layer contents without affecting the other; and interesting use for this trick is shown in this tutorial)

The next actions are variations of the theme. The next one in the list is “Layer Mask Hide All“ . It creates a layer mask like the first, only you’ll see that it’s filled with black, hiding everything on the layer it’s connected to. This can be handy if you only want to reveal a little bit of the layer - eyes, for example, or small details. You could also use this on a duplicate background layer for spot color effects: duplicate your background layer and run the Layer Mask: Hide All action. Now make your original background layer active, and add a Hue/Saturation adjustment on it, pulling the saturation slider all the way to the left to desaturate the layer. You should see a B&W image.

Now go back to the background copy layer, click on the layer mask icon, and paint in white any area that you want to reveal the color .

The next two actions in the list, “Hide Selection” and “Reveal Selection“, will create a layer mask from any selection you have made with any of the selection tools (the lasso/magnetic lasso, circular / rectangular marquee, selection brush, etc.). Based on the name, the action will create a mask based on your selection that either hides or shows what’s selected. Handy? You bet - you can make intricate, complex selections with your favorite selection tool(s) and then generate the mask from that. It’s sometimes much easier to do it that way than to try and create a mask later.

The final action in the Layer Mask family is “Invert Mask“. This does exactly what the name implies - it inverts the mask so all values are recreated opposite: white areas become black, black areas become white, and grey areas are mapped to their opposite values.

It’s pretty handy for creating fast proofs of opposite effects. For example, say you’ve created an image with a splash of color using a mask as outlined above. Now let’s say that you’re not sure if you like it as it is, or if you’d like to see it with the color areas B&W and vice versa.

To make a new proof of the same image without having to recreate the mask from scratch, duplicate the layer with the mask on it, and on the duplicate layer, click the layer mask icon to make it active. Now simply run the “Invert Mask” action. Turn off the eyeball of the layer beneath (the non-inverted-mask layer) to see what you’ve got. Toggle the eyeballs of the two layer on and off for two quick views of the image with about half work. Handy!

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(*NOTE: the directions below are for Windows XP. If you use Vista, substitute “C:\Program Data\” for every place that you see “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\“.)

First download the newest version of Add-O-Matic (just log into your account at the Graffishop, choose “My Account” at the top, and then click ”Show all orders”. Locate the order that has the Add-O-Matic in it, and you’ll see that the download link is reactivated.

Next, remove any earlier versions of Add-O-Matic (if you used the suggested method, first delete the Add-O-Matic.exe file from your My Documents folder, and then go to your Start menu and remove the link to Add-O from there - just right-click it, and choose either “Remove” or “Unpin”, whichever comes up). Unzip the new version you just downloaded, extract the .exe file to your My Documents folder, right-click it, and choose “Pin to Start Menu” from the menu.

Third, navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\5.0\Photo Creations\special effects\Added Effects (this is a hidden folder, so it might be easier to just copy & paste that address into your browser and let it open the folder for you). You should see a bunch of individual *.atn files - select all of them, create a new folder on your desktop, and move all of these actions out of this folder and into the new one on your desktop. Make sure this Added Effects folder is empty.

Fire up Add-O by clicking it in your Start menu (assuming you pinned it there - if not, run it from wherever you’ve saved it). Open the folder on your desktop with all the actions and drag them all into the big orange square in Add-O-Matic, and click “GO!”. It will reinstall all the actions into the Added Effects folder, but now they’ll all be in individual folders.

To make thumbs for these actions: First, open an image you want to be the thumbnail and run the action (let’s call it “Cool Action 1″).

When the action finishes, resize the image to 64 x 64 pixels (you could also crop to this size if you prefer - choose the crop tool and input 64 px width x 64 px height in the options bar at the top) and then flatten it - there should be just 1 layer in the file. Rename this layer (currently “Background“) by double-clicking the layer name in the Layers palette and typing in exactly the action it represents (so in this example, name the layer “Cool Action 1“). Look for any weird characters in the action name - “*” or “_”, for example.

Click File>Save As and keep .psd selected as the file type. Name the file thumbs.psd - this is important, it MUST be named “thumbs.psd”!

Navigate to the folder where the action lives - C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\5.0\Photo Creations\special effects\Added Effects\Cool Action 1\ and save the thumbs.psd in the same folder with the Cool Action 1.atn

Restart PSE 5 and your effects palette should show your new thumbnail - !

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• All of my existing add-on actions work just fine. Why do I want to remove them from the PC and reinstall them? What’s wrong with just using the updated Add-O-Matic on installations of new stuff?

Two reasons: they will display better in the palette (i.e., the effects palette will be easier to navigate), and it’ll make it easier to create thumbnails for them manually later.

• First of all - I’m ONLY referring to actions previously added using Add-O-Matic that go into the special effects\Added Effects folder.

You can drag all of the actions out of this directory and keep them temporarily in a folder on your desktop. Delete them from the Added Effects folder.
Now you can rerun them through Add-O-Matic, and they will be put into their own folder within the Added Effects directory that Add-O creates. It keeps the directory a little cleaner and easier to find things.

It’ll also make it easier to manually create thumbnails for the actions there, because they’re each in their own directory. Now, potentially, you won’t run into any issues with having to create a file “thumbs.psd” and give it numerous layers, arranged reverse-alphabetically, and have them correspond to a ton of different actions.

So now, you have a lot of folders in the Added Effects directory - each one can have a .psd named “thumbs.psd” with a single layer which is named the same as the action it represents - so if the action is called “Cool Action 1.atn“, it was placed into a folder called “Cool Action 1“, and if you want to make a thumbnail for it, create a thumbs.psd file, and name the only layer in that .psd file “Cool Action 1“. Restart PSE5, and you should see a new thumbnail there.

Check out the screenshots: now my Added Effects menu shows thumbnails for all the effects I have added -

This second example below shows an action in there that doesn’t have a thumbnail - it displays without a thumb.

If I left all the other actions in the Added Effects menu outside of their own subdirectory, they will display without thumbs even if I’m in another action’s subdirectory - am I making sense?

So below, I have an action not in a subdirectory - it’s right in the Added Effects folder. Even though I’m in the Color Grade action’s folder, the first action still shows up (which is kind of annoying to me…):

I’ll post my actions as both regular (i.e., PSE 4/Mac-friendly, and regular Photoshop users) and I’ll also make a separate download for Add-O-Matic users, which will include the option at the end to make a thumb for the action.

I’m also trying to script a way to automatically create thumbs for EVERY action you might add, but so far (almost a year now…) I’ve not been able to get it working flawlessly. I’ll keep trying - I’m stubborn that way…

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