Every few months I evaluate my Photoshop workflow when processing images. I’m always thrilled when I find something new that improves my photo processing. It can be something subtle or something drastic. Recently I was contacted to review some landscape Photoshop Actions by Sleeklens. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited to see what they can do. Sleeklens offers two different versions: Photoshop actions and Lightroom actions. I chose to review the Photoshop actions as I process exclusively in Photoshop. At the time of this article, Sleeklens offers 56 custom Photoshop actions/brushes. You simply load the actions from the Photoshop actions palette. Here is a sample image of what it looks like:
As with any action, they are very easy to operate/run. You simply highlight the action you want to run and click the play button. The result is a layer added on top of the background image where you either control the intensity of the action by the opacity or brush on the effects (depends on the action).
I experimented with all of the actions and decided to illustrate the TONE Color Pop action on one of my images. Here is a photo called Nature’s Color Palette that I opened from a raw file. The only adjustment made was a highlight/shadow adjustment:
Next I applied the TONE Color Pop action and left the opacity slider at 100% (maximum effect for the action):
As you can see there’s a significant saturation increase on the image.
In conclusion, if you are a beginner and are a little intimidated by Photoshop these actions might be a good candidate for you. The actions cover a broad selection of effects one would want to make on images (highlight reductions, exposure manipulations, temperature, saturation, web sharpening etc..) without the overhead of having to master Photoshop. As for me, I have a pretty comprehensive workflow process where I’ve incorporated bits and pieces from programs and masks. I will continue to evaluate these actions and would most likely use them subtly by painting effects onto the image. To learn more about Sleeklens landcape actions and other Sleeklens actions, please visit the following URLs:
https://sleeklens.com/product/landscape-adventure-photoshop-actions/
https://sleeklens.com/product-category/photoshop-actions/