A couple weeks ago, I posted a simple how-I-edit-photo’s tutorial and included a basic photo edit action (Frustration with a freebie). Turns out, you guys love that! We’ve had a rough week, nothing dramatic, just rough, and I woke up this morning to no new photo’s magically on my camera. Luckily I have a Dane. He happily poses for photo’s so we ran upstairs to our “winter garden” (aka: 4-season room) to take  some quick photo’s.

It was quickly apparent that the rough week had an effect on Dane. He looks a little worn out & tired in the photo’s, really more than a 9-year-old should.  Still, I can’t help but love all photo’s of  my baby. I didn’t want to just delete these because they weren’t perfect. I also didn’t have a ton of time to edit and, frankly, sometimes it’s okay to let the photo’s tell the real story. In this case, we had a rough week.

I ran my basic photo edit action from Frustration with a freebie, and realized I did not like the way the story was told in color. I know several ways to quickly convert a photo from color to black & white. The first way, the easiest way: Image>>Adjustments>>Black & White created a flat image. Sometimes it’s what we want, and I did include this in the updated Basic Photo Action as: Black & White I. I prefer the second way, adding a gradient map in the layers palette. I added this in the updated Basic Photo Action as Black & White II.

You can see my results below, and the before & after on my favorite photo from this morning.

You can no longer downloaded the updated Basic Photo Edit action.

SOOC – Dane looks so tired

Using the built-in B&W function in photoshop (included as action Black & White I)

Using the action Black & White II, applies a b&w gradient map.

Edited only using the action, decreasing the Levels layer to 9%.

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