Photoshop Actions

Martin and I have become friends with Colton Spencer in our ward.  He is about my age and is a professional photographer.  He is kindly showing me the ropes.  He came over a couple weeks ago and spent about an hour showing me some valuable things:

• Workflow through Bridge, Camera Raw, and Photoshop
• How to write Photoshop Actions to batch process and save images
• How to create my own watermark and create an action to add it to photos
• When working with clients be upfront about expectations then "underpromise and overdeliver." (Say it will take you a month to edit and then get it done in one week, for example.)
• How to use the Curves layer in Photoshop rather than the histogram
• How to sharpen eyes and whiten teeth
• He actually downloaded several sets of Photoshop Actions for me to use free of charge!
• At another time he's going to show me how to make HDR images in Photoshop, how to merge pictures, how to use Liquefy to make people skinnier, and how to use a make-up action (to actually apply make-up to people's faces!).
• This was all just after he did a photo shoot for my family.  It was amazingly relaxed and fun and the girls did wonderful.  He edited the photos for me but also gave me the RAW files so I can practice editing as well.

Colton's Edit

My Edit 

Colton is the mentor I have been looking for.  He is eager to help and share his knowledge and answers all my questions.  I am still extremely hesitant to seek photo shoots and just see this as a hobby right now but hopefully I can push out of my shell as my skills and knowledge grow.