Wanted to post up a free preset for everyone today. This is Vintage I, and it’s a neat Lightroom preset to give a nice vintage tone to a photo. There’s actually three vintage presets I just made that will come with my Power Workflow Lightroom Presets.
This a good general purpose vintage, and more than just a saturation reduction. Just start with standard photo and add this for a great vintage effect. I notice that sometimes with darker photo’s it helps to bump the exposure up just a little before you run this. Other cool variations are now included with my entire collection. Note that this preset is now included in the Power Workflow Fantasy Sampler which is also a free presets download.
I just wanted to post an update on my Black & White fine art presets collection for Lightroom. Things are coming along well though I don’t have a specific launch date I do hope to be posting some actual sample images very soon.
I’m so excited about the effects that are coming together as I see Lightroom flex is muscle in a whole new way. This set is like no other effects collection I’ve ever made available and I want it to fulfill our needs as photographers so I don;t want to rush it. Black and white can be a challenge, but this is going to make it a breeze.
I believe you’ll think it well worth the wait, so stay tuned. If you want to be added to the notify list just contact me here… Gav
PS. We should also see a few freebies coming down the pipes from this set!
Just wanted to post an update on What’s new here at Seim Effects. Another update is planned for Power Workflow and should be ready soon. This update is going to add a few more presets to this already big set and will be free for Power Workflow owners.
Next in the works is… You guessed it! Black & White, Preset for Lightroom. I’m getting really excited about this set. The default settings for B&W in LR are pretty dull. With power workflow we launched some cool BW effects, but “Black & White is going to take it a step further with presets that will transform color images to B&W art.
Stay tune for more details, and probably even a free sample or to when they launch. If you want to be notified when their available just email me
Hey all you Seim Effects, and Pro Photo Show fans. You may have already seen this on the PPS site but for those over here at Seim Effects I just wanted to wish a great Christmas, and post up a link to a free photo shop action.I made a special Photoshop Action just for the occasion called Christmas Glow. It’s a nice effect that will make that Christmas tree photo look great, along with anything else that you want a nice smooth effect on. It’s great for portraits, even for a landscape effect, or just about anything else.
It’s not a big gift, but I know most of you have Photoshop, and it’s something I could give to you all. It should work on CS2, and CS3. For earlier versions just try it and see, it’s free after all! Have merry Christmas and a happy New Year… Gav
This is a shot I took last spring but just recently finished editing it for fine art prints. It’s an HDR of the downtown Seattle skyline. After the HDR was rendered it looked goos but it was still just a skyline show. I started to work in Photoshop to make something more. Of course fine art and is in the eye of the beholder so I’ll let you be the judge, but I thought I would talk a bit about how to achieved this shot.
I started with the above three images taken at various exposure levels and made an HDR using Photomatix Pro. Of course your image does not have to be an HDR.
I then used “The Edge”action from my Hollywood Effects Photoshop actions set. This can also be done without an action though it will take a bit longer. The Edge basically adds some snap using curves, levels and sharpening. This gave me a cool looking image like we see below.
Next I wanted to go a step further. I made the image into a high contract black and white using Le Creme Infrared from Hollywood Effects actions. You could also use your own B&W method. As I add effects to the image I fine tune it, mask off areas ect to keep things looking the way I want. I also went thru using the burn and dodge tools to lighten/darken clouds and other areas. This is one of my secrets for adding dimension to an image. I especially darkened the edges. Play around with it and you’ll see what I mean. Then I cropped the image for a wide look.
It looked good whole, but it felt better in this widescreen look. Finally I added an acid burn type border to it. I used Photo Frame Pro, but there are various ways to achieve this, and many border styles would have looked good.
In the end I got this final image that I’m really happy with. There’s a thousand different directions I could have gone with this, so it certainly does not define a fine art print by itself. The key to taking and image and making it a masterpiece is proper editing and many of us overlook that. Of course you don’t spend an hour on every image, but I see people all the time with cool images that still look plain because they are straight out of the camera. In the old days it took lots of time in the darkroom burning, dodging, and whatever effects could be mustered to make an image great. Now we don’t have to do that. We take some time to make our snapshots into grabshots!
Just wanted to post an update on What’s new here at Seim Effects. Another update is planned for Power Workflow and should be ready soon. This update is going to add a few more presets to this already big set and will be free for Power Workflow owners.
