I do agree for the most part. Most actions that I have used, I will manipulate to give my own feel. This action has way to many steps that I would not do it by hand, it you probably could do it with less steps (by a ton). I will paste in here a screen dump of the steps used in the action so you can see. It is big.
But just to go back to it, I agree. It is cheating and I usually use it as base not the finished product.
Here is the dump:
Action: pOpArTiSt
Duplicate first document
Name: “pOpArTiSt”
Flatten Image
Convert Mode
To: RGB color mode
Convert Mode
Depth: 8
Reset Swatches
Color Range
Colors: shadows
Expand
By: 5 pixels
Feather
Radius: 15 pixels
Levels
Adjustment: levels adjustment list
levels adjustment
Channel: composite channel
Gamma: 1.8
Fade
Opacity: 100%
Mode: luminosity
Set Selection
To: none
Make snapshot
From: Current History State
Name: “Original”
Using: full document
Duplicate current layer
Name: “Anisotropic”
Diffuse
Mode: anisotropic
Rotate first document
Angle: 90°
Diffuse
Mode: anisotropic
Rotate first document
Angle: -90°
Unsharp Mask
Amount: 500%
Radius: 0.3 pixels
Threshold: 0
Fade
Opacity: 100%
Mode: luminosity
Dust & Scratches
Radius: 1
Threshold: 0
Fade
Opacity: 100%
Mode: darken
Flatten Image
Make snapshot
From: Current History State
Name: “Anisotropic”
Using: full document
Color Range
Colors: midtones
Feather
Radius: 15 pixels
Curves
Adjustment: curves adjustment list
curves adjustment
Channel: composite channel
Mapping: 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, ...
Set Selection
To: none
Levels
Adjustment: levels adjustment list
levels adjustment
Channel: composite channel
Gamma: 1.5
Desaturate
Fade
Opacity: 100%
Mode: color
Duplicate current layer
Name: “Too much booze”
Invert
Set current layer
To: layer
Mode: color dodge
Gaussian Blur
Radius: 1 pixels
Merge Layers
Levels
Adjustment: levels adjustment list
levels adjustment
Channel: composite channel
Gamma: 0.1
levels adjustment
Channel: red channel
With Auto
levels adjustment
Channel: green channel
With Auto
levels adjustment
Channel: blue channel
With Auto
Diffuse
Mode: anisotropic
Fade
Opacity: 100%
Mode: screen
Diffuse
Mode: anisotropic
Rotate first document
Angle: 90°
Diffuse
Mode: anisotropic
Rotate first document
Angle: -90°
Cutout
No. of Levels: 5
Edge Simplicity: 0
Edge Fidelity: 3
Fade
Opacity: 85%
Mode: normal
Brightness/Contrast
Contrast: 75
Make snapshot
From: Current History State
Name: “Art”
Using: full document
Select snapshot “Anisotropic”
Unsharp Mask
Amount: 200%
Radius: 0.5 pixels
Threshold: 0
Cutout
No. of Levels: 8
Edge Simplicity: 10
Edge Fidelity: 3
Hue/Saturation
Without Colorize
Adjustment: hue/saturation adjustment list
hue/saturation adjustment
Hue: 0
Saturation: 80
Lightness: 0
Make snapshot
From: Current History State
Name: “PoP”
Using: full document
With replace existing
Select snapshot “Art”
Duplicate first document
Name: “Original”
Select previous document
Select snapshot “PoP”
Apply Image
With: calculation
Source: RGB channel of merged layer of document “Original”
Calculation: multiply
With Preserve Transparency
Apply Image
With: calculation
Source: RGB channel of merged layer of document “Original”
Calculation: multiply
With Preserve Transparency
Make snapshot
From: Current History State
Name: “pOpArTiSt”
Using: full document
With replace existing
Select next document
Close
Saving: no
Stop
Like I said, it was a ton of steps. :animwink:
Originally posted by NowInc
ewwww...actions. Cheater !
hehe
If you couldnt guess..im very against the use of actions as well as 99% of the plugins available.
Just the artist in me sharing its concern for the lack of "heart" behind using actions...not knocking you or anything (seriously), but actions are just using someone elses work and making it your own essentially. They were originally invented to make batch processing easier, and evolved into a way for people who dont know how to use photoshop (not saying you dont, but the majority of action users have no concept as to what is actually being done in the action) getting artistic credibility for pressing "play". Dunno...doesnt seem right to me.
My suggestion, take the action, and actually observe what its doing (step by step), so that you can essentially do it yourself manually and make personalized alterations as you see fit. Not only will you feel better about the outputted image, but it would have your own personal touches added to it.
MY way of doing this would have been to use the original image as a background base, and then used layers to do my own manual "painting" on top. This adds style as well as makes it WAYYYYY easier to change certain details without having to start over.
..woah..long post..sorry!
