JHP Action Review - Vintage

Since JHP Photoshop Actions has kindly sent me their Complete Set to play with and review, I thought I'd spend a little more time on each set and show some examples from each set. I started with the Vintage set because I had an image that was perfect for it. I ran the EverydayBoost-Vintage action and then added Intensify from the Color Lab set. Then I applied a radial gradient to the mask of the Intensify Layer to bring out the vehicle. Lastly, I added a SimpleVignette - Dark from the Creative Lab set; applied a gaussian blur (around 90 pixels) and lowered the opacity to about 30%.
The image shown below is the after. If you hover (thanks to this wonderful tip from ShadowHouse Creations) your mouse over it, you can see the before.

Here is another example using four more actions from the Vintage set: Instamatic S-10, Vintage Power, RetroMagazine and Turn Back the Clock (with Intensify from the Color Lab set). Click on the image for a larger view.

These are quick and easy one-click actions giving you excellent results with little effort. One thing to note, though, is that if you're using CS5, you'll run into a few snags where the actions are looking for filters that have been removed. But you can just click Continue to skip the step and finish the action. And if you feel up to it, you can always open the action and uncheck the misbehaving step. I'm told that a CS5 and an Elements version will be coming soon.
Well, that's it for today. I think I'll try the Retouch Lab Set next. Remember to check out the free actions
at JHP and if you decide to purchase the Complete Set, here is the 15% discount code again ==8473988B

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Coming Soon - new Action Review!

I have some exciting news! I just got a set of JHP Photoshop Actions complete set (yay). I'm working through them and will post a review with Recipes and examples here shortly.
In the meantime, you can download their free actions and give them a try.
If you like them, use this code to get a 15% discount for the complete set: 8473988B

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Here it is!

The new blog look, that is! I know, it may be a bit underwhelming, but I thought I'd stick with a less distracting background, like, oh, white maybe. And no, it didn't take me this long to come up with it; I got a little sidetracked with other stuff.
So, hopefully I won't get tired of the new look too soon. I'm one of those people who used to re-arrange their living room (or any other room for that matter) about every six months.
I did put a little color in the footer though and cut my header picture down a bit. I'm still not completely happy with the header and I'll probably have to clean up the footer area some more, but I think it'll work for now.

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