Creating Instagram-like effects in Photoshop | lynda.com tutorial

This is a photograph that I captured a few years back when I was on a surf trip with
some friends down in Mexico. And with this photograph I want to take a look at how we
can apply those effects, which we see when we're using Instagram or Hipstamatic. You
know those effects that you can create on those different apps that you have for your
camera phone. Well, how can we do that in Photoshop? Well, we can do that by using Actions.
And the Actions that I will be highlighting here in this movie really represent a larger
group of actions that we can use in order to modify the color of our photographs in
some incredibly creative ways. All right, in order to highlight a few actions I'm going
to open up my web browser and here you can see I'm at a particular site. This is a blog,
it's a blog of Daniel Box. If you do a search for his name and also for the words Instagram
Filters for Photoshop, it will take you to this section. Here if you scroll down you
can see he shows a few examples of how these filters compare to the incredibly popular
Instagram app. In this case you can see that the comparison is pretty close. If you scroll
down to the bottom, what you can then do is you can download these actions for free. And
there are so many different actions out there that you can then download for free. So let's
take a look at how we can download these and then use them. I've actually already downloaded
them to my Downloads folder. You can see that I have this little ACTIONS icons here. Well,
what we want to do is once you've downloaded the .atn file. You can simply double-click
it. That will then install that action inside of Photoshop. Then to use it in order to apply
those settings in to your photographs just click on the Play button here to open up your
Actions panel, and now here you can see we have these instagram actions that were created
by this particular person. And it was incredibly kind of this person to kind of put in all
the effort of building these actions and then to share them with us for free. Well, what
you can do is you can use these or others that you'll find if you simply do a few searches.
And many of these different actions allow us to do different things. For example, many
of these apps create formats which are square. So let's say that we want to crop this image
so that it's square. We can click on the action name and then press Play, and it will then
crop the photograph. Next we want to apply a color effect. To do that you can simply
choose one of the color effects and then press the Play button. And it'll go through a number
of different steps in order to modify your image in an interesting way. Last but not
least say with one of these I want to add a border that's thin and white. So here I'll
click on the Play button, and you can see that it'll add that border. And in this case,
incredibly quickly, it's stimulated this instagram type of a look with a photograph that I captured
with a digital SLR. And by working with color like this it could just help you think about
different ways that you might want to process or work with your photographs. This is incredibly
powerful, so I recommend that you do a few searches for some Photoshop actions. Search
for vintage color effects or instagram or hipstamatic. And then download the actions
which are free and try them out for your self. Last but not least with these if you feel
like you don't like what you've done here open up the Actions panel and right next to
it on the other tab you'll find the History. Here it shows all the different steps that
are involved in this action. We can click on the original image to reset this back to
normal. Let's say, for example, that we want to create our own crop or here we can use
the Crop tool. Use a 1x1 aspect ratio then I can click and drag this around to reposition
this crop. In a way that's a little bit less arbitrary. I'm deciding how I want to crop
the photograph and then after having done that press Enter or Return in order to create
that crop. Next we can then go back to those Actions and apply any of these. Here what
I'll do is select a different action, go ahead and exit out of that Crop tool by pressing
the V key, and then select an action say like Walden and then press Play and see how this
one looks. Next I'll try a different border out this time, I'll try a border which has
a little bit of a color in it and then press Play so that we can see how that looks. And
again here we have flexibility with these if we simply go back to our history. Yet I
also need to point out that when you're working with this it is changing your image and flattening
all that's been done to it. So you want to make sure that you're working on a duplicate
or copy version of your photograph so that these changes aren't forever embedded in your
image file. And by working on copies or duplicates it can also help you to be a little bit more
free or creative with how you use these type of actions in order to modify your pictures.