SEim Effects Photo Tools

One of today’s big hurtles a good photographer must overcome is getting that amazing final edit. If you take your image straight out of the camera and leave it at that, you probably won’t get much notice.

Standing out is about being excellent as well as being different. Being different however is more than it suggests. Just looking different isn’t good enough if it’s not attractive to your target audience. With all the effects I make, I get people asking me what effect I used for a certain look. The simple fact I try to get across is that no single photo works the same. What an action may do to one image and look great, may effect the pixels different on another and look horrible. The details count. Today I’ll illustrate that by analyzing a recent image.

I call this shot The Gazebo. Though it’s a new favorite, it’s not an HDR or any other special acronym. It’s just a good foundation image, edited right. What I did to it was not so amazing, I just used the right effect at the right time.

The left side is straight out of camera. It’s good. I used my Canon 70-200 @ 150mm 1/125 at 2.8 ISO 320 with just a little fill flash. I  got nice compression and blur in the background. The evening light was coming from the right side and worked perfectly but was not really unusual.

I knew right away it had potential, so I started playing. Playing is the the keyword here. I use Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions not because it couldn’t be done manually, but because I want a great variety and I would not have that variety by doing it all manually every time. The effects I used were my own that are sold here in Seim Effects, but this applies to whatever you happen to use. I started with a vintage preset from Power Workflow2. I tend to use use vintage looks sparingly, but it worked well with this simple scene.

Then it’s on to Photoshop. I used the Old Fashioned Love Song from Hollywood Effects Actions. This helped me manipulate the light into something more interesting and glowing. Then thinking it needed a touch more I ran Simply Soft from Creative Essentials Actions. This is a skin softener that gives an almost porcelain quality. As I did this I used the masks to remove blur from areas of detail like the face.

Finally I finished up the way I normally do, and that’s by adding a little burn and dodge. This is a tool that most people overlook, and it one of those editing gems that right in front of us. I can draw the eye wherever I want it using burn and dodge. If you want to learn more about that see this post.

So there we have it. The finished product is done in only a few minutes had had that dreamy loving look to it. My point here if not that you need to use these specific effects to get your look. It’s that you need to do things other than just snapping the picture. Set up your system so it’s easy to add effects, because otherwise you’ll avoid them. I have my favorite actions or presets a click away, and when I’m working on a good shot I’m not afraid to try various looks because I can try ten different effects in the time I could do one of them manually. That gives me an edge.

What do you see in this image? How would you have done it differntly? Share your ideas in the comments. More to come in this series so stay tune… Gavin Seim

A few months back I posted a sample pack of my Creative Essentials actions. It tuned out that the download somehow ended up with some of my sample LR presets inside, instead of the PS action.

Hundreds of you download this set, and got the wrong thing. I just found out minutes ago thanks to a comment from Tanis. I feel pretty silly.

Anyways here is the original post that’s been updated with the new file. Enjoy, Gav

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Remember I’m here to help if you need it. Also here’s a shot taken on the beach I thought I’d throw in for fun. It’s been one of my popular ones on Flickr. Have a super week and stay tune to ProPhotoShow. New podcasts coming soon… Gavin

Hey gang. Here’s a small set of actions I made to help watermark photo’s. If your in SE fan club on Facebook you got these a few weeks ago. but I wanted to post them up here for the blog readers.

Nothing huge here. These just take a logo, or type and make it have that transparent bevel look of a watermark. These probably won;t be in a Seim Effects set anytime soon. I just thought some of you could use them.

You can also modify them to speed things up. For example you could record a command at the beginning of the action to place your logo at the start, and then save and close at the end so that you could automate the watermarking.

You can add commands to an action like this by simply selecting the action and pressing record. Then re-save the action when your done modding it.

~Here’s the Free download link~

UPDATE 10/2008: I had the wrong files in the download so people were getting one of my LR preset samples instead of the PS actions. It’s been fixed now.

Hey all. As many of you know I recently launched the new Creative Essentials actions. I’ve been using CE like crazy because it’s filled with action I use on everyday images I want to look great. It everything from skin softening effects, and fast glows to a mix of B&W’s, and workflow enhancers all in one simple clean set.

I thought I’d post up a few freebies for you all. Here’s three actions that come from the Creative Essentials set. They include Simply Soft I, Milk Chocolate, and Warm Me Up. The whole set has many more so if you like em check out the complete set.

Here’s the direct download, no strings, FREE as in totally FREE. Enjoy… Gav

~ Download Creative Essentials Sampler PS Actions ~

~ Check Out The Complete Action Set ~

Our Power Workflow lightroom presets are our most popular tool. Hundreds of photographers are using Lightroom with PW to keep their workflow going ultra fast. Our other presets, as well as the actions are also very popular, and we want your feedback.

I take Seim effects very seriously. I field test my presets and actions while under the gun, and I’m always looking for ways to make them better than before. I was just using some new Presets this weekend while at a wedding, and I’m pretty excited about what we’re working on.

So how could we improve our products. Organization, naming, categories, the way effects are applied. These are all things I try out and think about when working to make updates. What are your thoughts, and what would you like to see made to help us help you improve your editing??

Leave us a comment and let me know, or shoot me an email directly. A appreciate your feedback.

Also make sure in the S.E. club by being a a fan on Facebook. You’ll get updates, and most of all free goodies and effects to try out.

Gavin Seim

If you follow my photography blog, you probably saw my latest digital art work, that I call Road to the past. As promised here is the details of how I made it.

I recently saw the movie Speed Racer, and liked the smooth saturated Anime like feel. Not that it would work for every image, but it had a good feel. So I started to work an some actions. I frequently get visual ideas from movies, and movie posters, and though I’m sure this does not meet the official standard for Anime, it was inspired by that look.

I‘ve finally found a sweet spot with a few adjustable actions that give a saturated, Anime type look, without looking fake and foolish. Here’s a bit of what I did to get this image.

This is my original image. This was taken on a side road of HWY 12 in Washington. A cool shot, but not yet spectacular…

My first job in making this into digital art, was to clone out the things I didn’t want. The goal here was not to make an exact representation of this scene, but use it as the model for the piece I really wanted. I also added some clouds in place of the blank sky that was in the corner. Below is the cloned version.

So when all the cloning was done the rest was easy now that I had the action I needed. I ran the effect I’ve titled Anime II, and then spent some time doing final adjustments on the layers & masks. Lastly I added subtle beams of light (look far up the road) to add some dimension do the image. Basically this was dome by painting white lines on a new layer, blurring them, adding a little outer glow, and then setting that layer to overlay mode.

I‘m happy with the finished product, and it looks great in print. I feel the effect is not too over the top, and yet still has a good feel to it that offer something more than just a plain photo. It’s close to that line between painted, and photograph, yet without looking automated. I’m defiantly loving these actions

If you want to hurry me along making these actions available, or want to be added to the notification list just drop me a note… Gavin Seim