(drum roll please…….)

DDS Photoshop Elements

and

DDS WordPress/Customizing Prophoto Workshop.

Learn the ins and outs of Adobe Photoshop Elements and how to create amazing edits that you will love!

Rachel will teach you how to customize your WordPress Prophoto Blog/Blogsite with ease!

In addition to our 2 new PSE and WordPress/Customizing Prophoto Workshop… ALL of our actions will now be Elements compatible!

Check out our Digital Darkroom Secrets website or Facebook page on Wednesday, February 27, 2013 for our new workshop release and actions…. and also sale to sweeten the deal

Happy Valentine’s Day from Digital Darkroom Secrets!

Click HERE to visit our website.

Click HERE to visit our blog.

Our Digital Darkroom Secrets Sweet Cream Action is a MUST HAVE if you photograph sweet newborns.

It lightens skin, smooths it out, and gives your newborn images a gentle softness.  I absoultely love it!  I use our Sweet Cream action on every newborn photo and most of my wedding photography, too!

To purchase our Digital Darkroom Secrets Online Photoshop Workshop’s Sweet Cream Action, visit our website.

These images were edited with our Sweet Cream action at 100% and finished with our Secret Sharpen Action.

The accessories were inexpensive vintage store finds or props that I already had.

The chalk board is a repurposed frame with chalkboard paint.

The footstool was repainted in red complete with a foam and yellow chevron top.

I found the white bucket for $15 at a local thrift store and filled it with a dozen red roses.

The Love banner was purchased at a local vintage store but would be super easy to make.  Just hot glue triangles onto twine and stamp hearts and Love with paint and foam brushes from your local craft store.

I found the wooden chicken coop door at a vintage store for $20.  It’s perfect to hang adornments from and adds to the vintage feel of the shoot.  I cut hearts out of scrapbook paper that I had in my craft bin at home and tied them onto the chicken wire with string.

The large chevron heart was created by gluing two pieces of burlap together (leaving a small space to stuff) and stuffing it with plastic shopping bags to make it three-dimensional.  I cut a large heart from red chevron fabric found at a local thrift store and glued it onto the three-dimensional burlap heart with a hot glue gun.  Easy peasy!  A ribbon and burlap bow is wired onto the top.  So cute!

Lips on sticks are a cute way to add props to your kissing booth.  Mine were created by cutting lips out of scrapbook paper and taping them onto a small wooden dowel purchased for just pennies at a local craft store.

The aqua chair was a thrift store find for less than $10 and repainted and distressed using a chain, sandpaper, a screwdriver, and a hammer.

I “borrowed” the accent pillow from my bed and added my two vintage cameras: a Brownie and a Kodak Duaflex III that I purchased at a thrift store for $5 a few years ago.

Add some sweet treats like frosted heart cookies and Valentine cupcakes and three adorable models and you have an adorable themed set-up!

My daughter’s Valentine dress is from Corinna Couture and her headband is from The Pink Elephant Bowtique.

To find out more about mastering buttery backlight or how I edited all of these images using simple steps, visit our Digital Darkroom Secrets Workshop website.

“Advice from a Tree

Stand tall and proud.

Sink your roots into the Earth.

Be content with your natural beauty.

Go out on a limb.

Drink plenty of water.

Remember your roots.

Enjoy the view.”

Verses from a beautiful poem by llan Shamir

I have found the most perfect place for indoor pictures in my home.  It’s the perfect location on sunny or even rainy days.

I simply throw open my front door!

I have my subject stand in the doorway of the front door of my home facing out toward the light (with my subject’s back toward the inside of my house).  I then stand outside (with my back to the street) a few feet from the door frame.  Voila!  Gorgeous light and especially wonderful catchlights in the eyes.

So throw open your doors and take some beautiful photos of your loved ones or clients.

We’d love to see your “doorway photos”- please post them on our Digital Darkroom Secrets Facebook wall or leave a link in the comments below.  We can’t wait to check out your gorgeous work!

I had been feeling that way recently, until my wonderful husband bought me a Lensbaby Composer Pro for my 39th birthday.

I love the versatility of the Lensbaby Composer Pro with the Sweet 35 optic.

It’s perfect for these cold winter days that are getting shorter and shorter.  I pulled out the Lensbaby to play around with it a little more today. To read more about the Lensbaby lenses and fun optics click HERE.

To see how I (Krista) and Rachel create beautiful and dramatic B&Ws without actions, visit our Digital Darkroom Secrets Workshops.

With our Digital Darkroom Secrets Workshops, we help you add contrast, beautiful light and richness to your photographs.

Click HERE to visit our website and read more about our Digital Darkroom Secrets Workshops.

It saves us SO much time in Photoshop and allows us to spend more time with our families and our clients.

You can create your own custom actions to speed up your workflow, too.

Let me show you how.

1.  Open Photoshop and open any picture to work with.  Open your actions pallette and make sure that you are not working in button mode.

2.  Click on the “Create a New Action Set” button.  In the dialoge box, rename your set and click okay.

3.  Now click on the “Create a New Action” button.

In the dialog box, rename your new action.  I renamed mine “Soft Edit”.  You can also assign this custom action a function key to create a shortcut for you to use when you are editing.  I like to assign my new action a custom color so that it can easily be found when I’m working in button mode.

You will then click record.

Here is where the magic happens.  As you edit, every edit that you make will be recorded.  You can make your own adjustment edits or even run a favorite action and sharpening at the end.  Take your time.  You can even reduce the opacity of the actions or edits that you make, just remember that Photoshop is recording every adjustment that you make.

4.  When you are finished recording your adjustments and edits, click the “Stop Playing/Recording” button.

Now you have a custom action that you can run on a set of images or on all of your images.  This will save you TONS of time in Photosh0p.

We’d love to hear from you!  Try creating a custom action of your own in Photoshop and let us know how this tutorial worked for you.  Feel free to post comments here in our blog or on our Facebook page HERE.

Here is my screenshot of Lightroom 4. The circled area is where the sharpening controls are at. (in the Details panel)

There are 4 sliders in the sharpening section in the Detail module.

The first one is the amount slider. This is the overall strength of the sharpening effect. Lightroom defaults this setting to 25 and it ranges from 0 to 150. The higher the number, the more sharpening will happen.

The second slider is the radius. This is basically controls how fine of detail is going to be sharpened. The larger the number, the larger the radius. If you go too big, you will get a halo effect, so don’t get too carried away! The default is 1.0.

The third slider is the detail slider. This will help reduce the overall halo effect. This one works backwards with the numbers. If you have the slider up at 100 (it goes from 0-100), no reduction in the halo effect. If it is set at 0, you will not have any halo. The default is 25.

The fourth slider is like the third. It masks out the overall sharpening effect. The higher the number, the more masking will occur. The default on this slider is 0.

Now, of course, I will let you know what settings I prefer to make this even easier!

I like to keep the amount around 50-86, the radius anywhere from 0.6-1.3, and detail from 22-30 and the masking from 0-49. These are definitely not perfect settings for all images, but it should help give you an idea of possibly where to be. It definitely depends on each image.

I hope this helped! Lightroom is always a quick and easy way to sharpen your images to speed up your workflow!