I got to noodling around again with some of the actions I’ve got loaded into my Photoshop Elements 6, and arrived at an interesting multi-effect in just four steps.

I started with this image to the left, and ran my “Another Soft Image” action on it, which killed some of the harsh contrast and softened things up a bit (to the right):

Next, I ran the “Faded Print” action to dull some of the remaining bright colors and give a subtle faded look to the image, left. It creates a nice blue-ish tone, and gives images a faded Polaroid look - similar to a snapshot from days gone by. It also adds a small white border around the entire image.

Next up was my “Overlay Diffusion” action (to the right), which uses another method to soften an image (can you tell I was going for a very soft, faded, dreamy effect for this image?!) . Some of the color that was diluted by the Faded Print & another Soft Image actions is slightly restored and boosted - you can see the red bricks and yellow trim areas have a bit more “oomph”.

The final touch was to open Glam Photo 3 and run the Old Romance action. It fades (yet again) the colors, adds just a bit of noise and creates a frame around the image. Combined with the small white frame added by the Faded Print action earlier, a nice triple-outline effect is achieved.

Experiment with the actions, and try different combinations to get truly interesting and eye-catching images.

Got any comments?  I’d love to hear what you think. Post your experiments with various effects in the Photoshop Elements Techniques Flickr group, and list the steps you took to get there.

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Looks like Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is set to hit shelves sometime around September 29.

I wonder how much coding will be needed to get Add-O-Matic and the rest of the Bundle Pack ready?  No worries - I’ll have upgrades ready shortly after release. Hopefully, Adobe hasn’t messed about too much with the inner database workings of Elements.

This new version has additional online image storage options, as well as built-in uploading and photo storage (20Gb)

With Photoshop.com Plus** membership, you can:

• Show off your creativity with inspiring ideas, tutorials, seasonal artwork, and templates delivered regularly to your software
• Backup your memories automatically and no scheduling required— get 20GB of storage — enough for up to 15,000 photos
• View your photos virtually anywhere you are
• Share photos in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only Online Albums — and you’ll get new templates delivered to your software on a regular basis

Stay tuned - you’ll get a first look as soon as my copy arrives.

(Wonder if they’ll include the Warp tool in Elements this time…?!)

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p_sasse has added a photo to the Flickr Photoshop Elements Techniques pool:

Just me peeking through this lovely creation. thank you to Schmiegel for allowing me to use his creations.

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A M deLioncourt has added a photo to the Flickr Photoshop Elements Techniques pool:

the Blue line subway coming in fast

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I’ve been messing around with Survey Monkey for some feedback at my “real” job, and thought I’d make a survey to post here, just for yuks.

So, if you’re a proud owner of one or more of the Graffi Action Effect Packs and/or Add-O-Matic, and you have a few seconds, will you pop over and answer the seven little questions I posted?

Thanks for feedback - I’m looking forward to getting back into making more sets this fall & winter!

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Another way to do an old effect. This one is complementary to the several sketch/comic/painted effects found in Sketchy-Paint 3

Hopefully the name is explanatory enough - check the sample images below, throw the unzipped action at your Add-O-Matic and you can create comic effects at will!

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In this easy tutorial you will learn how to create notebook paper style web layout. It also could work well with scrap pages.

View the original article

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