Today’s image is from the Umbrian hill town of Orvieto. We had two rainy days based in this hill town on our spring break trip. I found I took fewer pictures than normal on these days, probably because it’s hard to hold an umbrella and take a picture and keep your camera dry all at the same time. This image normally wouldn’t make it to my blog. I would include it the overall album of the trip as a nice shot of the streets of the town and the weather of the day, but nothing special. But today, just for fun, I decided to play around with it.
You see, the Pioneer Woman Photography blog recently offered their free actions for Photoshop Elements. Yay! So today I played with them on this photo and was amazed at the all of the different feelings I could get with this one photograph. I view actions as a little like candy – easy to overdose on if you’re not careful, but a little bit is fine! I would love to hear your comments on these. Which do you like? Which don’t you like? Why not? (There is no special order to these, I’ve just uploaded them in alphabetical order by action name – because it was easiest!)
Boost
B&W
Define&Sharpen
Dim the Lights
Fresh & Colorful
Heartland
Lovely & Ethereal
Sepia
Seventies
Soft & Faded
Vintage
I didn’t include all of the actions here, just the ones that I thought “worked” in some way with this image. Some really didn’t work at all! What’s fun about all of this playing is that you learn in the process. I hope you have some time to play too!
It's a great photo to start with. I love what the Define & Sharpen action did to it, and I love the Seventies look — kind of grainy like a movie from… the 1970s. The Black & White makes the scene appear ominous to me. Like the street is about to be blasted to bits in a scene from a World War II movie.
Clearly I watch too many movies.
I agree with Shannon – it was a great photo to start with… but I love what you did with it as you "played"