Monday, January 9, 2012

Honey Bee Actions


So once upon a time there was a girl named Becky Pitcher (who apparently liked to talk about herself in the third person, because this is a story about me), and she had many excellent photoshop actions that her husband bought for her because she waaaanted them.
And he likes to give her presents.
But one day Becky's computer died. It just quit. It was fit only to be used as... um... nothing. It was total garbage.
And all her photoshop actions were lost! How could she edit photographs?!
"Actions are for lazy editors," said Becky's dad.
"Actions are too expensive to buy," said the Internet when Becky looked up how much they cost.
"Make your own Actions!" said Travis, Becky's husband.

And so she did! And they freaking rock! (If I do say so myself. Ahem. How do I say that in third person?)

I have been really excited, and working late into the night, and ignoring my husband and children, and probably stealing photos off your blog (yes, YOURS!) to practice my actions on and see how they look on other people's pictures.
I have been emailing photographer friends and asking them to try them out, and watching Youtube videos with names like "Make your photos look vintage," and looking at other people's edits and trying to figure out how to replicate the look.
And I have been naming most of my Actions after the photo that I first used them on, so they have names like "Snuggling babies," "Micah Love," and "Christmas Cardigans."

And I have been deciding that maybe "Baby Making Actions" has the wrong ring to it.... because, um... you know.
(Oh. This isn't third person anymore, is it? Aw, well. Moving on, I guess. )

And so, after working like a little bumblebee for weeks, and after creating many "honey-toned" actions, and after having the Beatles song "Honey Pie," stuck in my head for DAYS I decided to call my Actions "Honey Bee Actions."

So let me tell you a bit about my action set.
First of all, for those of you who don't remember what an Action is (I talked about it {here}), it's essentially an edit in Photoshop that you can just slap on to any ol' picture. So you have a boring photo of your baby? BAM! Now it is a lovely, well-edited photo of your b-e-a-utiful baby.
Example:
Remember SOOC stands for "Straight out of camera" and Micah Love is the name of an action. 
Now MY action set consists of 25 Actions.
I'll even get into the nitty-gritty details:
7 of the actions are quick photo adjustments: warmer, cooler, vignette, light up, etc.
I'm not giving you examples, because frankly - those actions are useful but boring.

7 of the actions are black and white or sepia conversions, and if you're wondering why there are SO MANY bw actions it's because I hate editing into BW from color. It never looks how I want. So now I've created several bw edits so you can find the perfect one. Your photo won't look drab or over or under contrasted. It will be lovely.
Here are some examples:


11 of the actions are for color photos, and range from highly-saturated, intensified photo brighteners to warm, calm vintagey effects.
Examples? Indeed!



BUT there is not (and I promise this to you, right now) a single action that I do not personally use.
I've been weeding them out. I created many actions that didn't make it into the final cut because they weren't really my style, and why should I ask you to pay for something that even I wouldn't want?
And I've been using them lately on my blog so that you can see how I put them into use myself. In fact, all {these posts} featured Honey Bee Action-edited photography.

And this post is getting long, but I just wanted to say: these are the things that I kept in mind for you, dear readers:
1. There is a wide variety of actions here, but not TOO many. Because I have downloaded action sets before with 100+ actions and I really only use a dozen of them. You don't need them all. I promise. So why should you pay for them all?

2. These action sets are pretty freaking inexpensive, and that's because ACTIONS COST SO MUCH MONEY. It's ridiculous. I don't want you to spend so much money. (But I DO want you to spend a little. So buy some actions.)

3. If you are well-versed in Photoshopography (Real word. Trust me.) then you will probably find these actions to be highly-customizable. You can mix them, cut them apart, use a layer here or there and make magic happen.
Oh, here's an example. These are all the same action, but applied differently:

4. If you are NOT well-versed in Photoshopography, don't sweat it. The beauty of the Honey Bee Action set is: you don't need to know how to edit photos yourself. I will edit them for you.
And they will look lovely.
I promise. (And that's a guar-en-tee.)

5. These actions are STRONG. Even I don't use them all at their full power, but it's nice because you can always water-down actions, but you can't make them stronger. So you can use them to fit your style of editing. 

So I think you should look over at {my new website} (aka tab on THIS website, until I possibly buy a domain for this biz-nez)
And I think that you should buy yourself some actions, but if you want to wait until next week - that's okay, because I just maybe doing a giveaway on this blog starting tomorrow.
Hmm. Maybe.

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7 comments:

Polly said...

Awesome Becky I am so excited for you and the name is super cute! You rock!

Brittany said...

I love these actions! I've been meaning to blog about them, but lately I've been too lazy to even use actions. :/ I will repent and blog about them soon. :)

Little Gray Pixel said...

Nice! Do they work in Photoshop Elements, too, or just Photoshop?

Mandy said...

Super cute! They are fabulous!!! Congrats!

Anonymous said...

How exciting! Congratulations, also wanted to know if they work with Photoshop Elements??

Becky Pitcher said...

@Sarah [NurseLocesFarmer.com] @ Little Gray Pixel
Ah! They do not work in PSE, I'm sad to say. Sorry ladies. There's a chance I'll try to make them for Elements, but probably not in the near future...

Celia said...

Oh man! I want them so badly!! I need photoshop!!