Photo Editing for Fun

One of the first things I do after a trip is start the tedious task of going through photos. We take more frames on vacation than more weddings. I think this time around we blew through 15,000. It's easy to do in certain situations! Anyhow, so that they don't just sit in my computer I start flipping through them right away, narrowing them down to the best and then making folders on my desktop for the best shots in each location. The goal is to put together a coffee table book (I use blurb.com) that we can pick up anytime.

I know that many of you want to be able to edit your photos from your weddings to do the same exact thing with. I started thinking about the most cost-effective way for people to do this last night and realized you can really get very professional results for free these days.

Step #1: Download a 30 day free trial of Photoshop on the adobe website, and install it

Step #2: Download groups of "actions" (the wondrous filtering and lighting techniques that make all those photos you swoon over look so amazing) via Pioneer Woman Photography

Step #3 : install the actions and have a ball...

Here are a few results I got this morning. Sorry, I didn't have any wedding related images on hand so you'll have to bear with me ...

You can see many of the orginals below. I like both, but for variety when you're putting a book together I love these actions!