My First Free Photoshop Action-- {Sharp as a Tack}

My Photoshop students know-- Actions are just one of the many ways that Adobe Photoshop has worked to automate your workflow and make editing of photos easier. 

While I want you to know how to use Photoshop and understand the functions and processes involved in everything you do in Photoshop, I also love the ability to automate repetetive actions and to learn new things as you study and adjust Actions. 

My first Action that I have made for my student's usage is CWP-Sharp as a Tack.    This Action will sharpen your image using  a High Pass Filter, one of the best ways to sharpen your image, but one of the lesser known. 

I will be posting later the Action Recipe for how you can do this, or you can look at my Photoshop Extras page for this and future Actions for my students.

{Making the Most of Your Point and Shoot Camera}

Point and Shoot digital cameras have come a long way from the simple 2MP still image recorders of just a few years ago.  Today, a wide variety of creative styles and inexpensive editing software has changed the world of digital photography to the level of art, even for those who cannot afford expensive professional cameras. 

This series will cover basics of using your point and shoot digital camera beyond the automatic settings and quick fixes that you can do to when it seems like your camera just doesn’t “get” what you want it to do. 

One of the most popular features of point and shoot cameras is their numerous Creative Settings.  One of the most powerful is the Portrait setting.  This setting is most often symbolized as a woman's profile, sometimes in a hat.  This setting will do two things- it will make the point of focus crisp and clear while blurring out the background (commonly called bokeh) and will meter the exposure based upon the subject of the portrait rather than the surrounding background. 

This setting, naturally, is useful for portrait photography, but it can also be useful for still life photography where you would like to have a singular subject in focus and the surrounding area blurred.

What should the Portrait setting not be used for?  It functions poorly as a setting for landscape photography where you want a large area of your image in focus.  Some cameras also have issues in the portrait setting when they are trying to photograph larger groups of people.  The camera wants to have a smaller area in focus, and so people in the background or along the sides of the image may not be in focus. 

Up Next in Making the Most of Your Point and Shoot Camera: The Sports Creative Setting.