To me, one of the most unexpected byproducts of digital photography is that it has rekindled tremendous interest in film processes of one kind or another. Alien Skin’s Exposure 4 plug-in for Photoshop lets you explore all sorts of film processes without ever having to soak your hands in noxious chemicals. I recently spent some time with the latest version, and was pleased to find that it remains an excellent option for users who want either a specific traditional film look, or any kind of analog, or grunge process. You can read my entire review here.

The Photoshop Automator Actions v5.0.5 Updater is now available. This is an important update for all users of the package. It turns out there was a gnarly bug in version 5.0.4 that affected the Open action. That’s all fixed now, and the Convert to Profile action has been put back in the package (I accidentally left it out of the last rev).
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In most of your image editing endeavors, you probably find yourself striving to achieve more contrast in your images. This probably leads you to crank up black points, and make sure your whites are as white as possible. There are times, though, when less contrast will give you a better image. I first covered this idea in 2005, in this article. Recently, the subject came to my attention again, as I decided that the best way to handle an image was to dramatically reduce the contrast. This time, I took a different approach to solving the problem.

The Photoshop Automator Actions v5.0.3 Updater is now available. This package updates delivers numerous bug fixes and tweaks, and adds Lion compatibility. Available for CS4 and CS5, the update is free to all users of both the free and Pro versions of the Photoshop Automator Actions Collection version 5. Updates are available here.

The last step of any photo workflow is to sharpen and output. If your final goal is an image for the web or email, then output simply means resizing and saving your image. If your final output is to print using an online printing service, then you’ll need to follow their size, resolution, and format specifications very carefully. Similarly, if your final destination is your own desktop printer, you’ll also need to set size and resolution before you print. While choosing size is pretty simple – you just resize the image to the printing dimensions that you want – choosing a correct resolution is a little trickier. In this article, we look at exactly what you need to consider when choosing a resolution for desktop inkjet printing.

The Photoshop Automator Actions v5.0.1 Updater is now available for free download. This package updates 18 actions and delivers numerous bug fixes, some additional features and two new actions. Available for CS4 and CS5, the update is free to all users of both the free and Pro versions of the Photoshop Automator Actions Collection version 5

Learn the ins and outs of landscape photography with this 6.75-hour course from Lynda.com. In it, I cover gear, shooting, aesthetics and lots and lots of post-production using Photoshop CS5. You’ll learn about landscape-specific exposure issues, tone and color correction, manipulating light and shadow, HDR, panoramic shooting, thinking like a painter, and much more. This is the full content of the online course, and you can learn all about it, and even order a copy (believe it or not) right here.

A photographer friend recently sent me this extraordinary collection of color images shot during the Depression. One of the things that’s fascinating about looking at them is that we simply are not accustomed to this subject matter being in color. It’s a fine example of McCluhan’s “medium is the message” idea. Your choices of black and white or color, grungy or sharp, saturated or muted – all of these have a huge impact on the reaction the viewer will have. For film photographers, many of these decisions are determined by film choice, and the ability to choose specific films to achieve a particular look or feel is one of the great advantages of film shooting. Alien Skin Exposure, a sophisticated film-simulating Photoshop plug-in, gives this same power to digital photographers.

Performing image resizing in a batch process can be tricky. How do you tell Photoshop to resize when you might have a batch of images of varying orientations and aspect ratios? Because batch resizing requires special consideration, version 5 of the Photoshop Automator Actions, contains four different resizing actions.

While the Photoshop Automator Actions ship with a lengthy, detailed, can’t-put-it-down user manual, there are times when an old-fashioned screencast is still an easier way to learn a new piece of software. Assuming that this is one of those times, I have put together the first in a series of movies that detail how to use Automator to drive Photoshop.

If you routinely find yourself slogging through tedious, repetitve chores in Photoshop, then you should try using Automator to streamline your batch processing chores. Built-in to Mac OS X 10.4 and later, Automator makes it simple to create sophisticated, complex automations. Out-of-the-box, Automator can’t control Adobe Photoshop, but with the addition of this Photoshop Automator Actions collection, you get everything necessary to drive Photoshop using Automator.

If you’re interested in landscape photography, then you might want to check out my new Photoshop CS5 for Landscape Photographers course at Lynda.com. This six-and-a-half hour video training course takes you from shooting through post-production, with thorough discussions of all of the landscape-related technical and aesthetic issues that you’ll face along the way. For more info, take a look at the preview, after the jump.

Photoshop CS5 has been shipping for a couple of weeks now, and if you follow such things, you’ve probably already heard about its new features. Photoshop serves many markets, from photography to graphic design to movie and web site production, so determining an overall assessment of the program can be tricky, as different markets have different needs. For photographers, though, Content-Aware Fill and the new Camera Raw are reason enough to upgrade. Many other features abound, and you can read about them in my comprehensive review.

While Photoshop tends to get most of the press during major upgrades, Bridge users have a few things to be happy about with the CS5 release. The new Export tab, which bundles Photoshop Image Processor-like functionality right into Bridge; the Mini Bridge which bundles Bridge right into Photoshop; new Batch Rename functionality and new Output features, and other tweaks and modifications make Bridge CS5 a welcome upgrade. Unfortunately, as with Photoshop, Adobe has not seen fit to add any migration features for moving Bridge database information into CS5. However, with a few file copies, it appears that you can move the bulk of your important Bridge data to the new version

Topaz Labs has been producing Photoshop filters aimed at photographers (as opposed to design-oriented plug-ins) for a while now, and – for good reason – their collection has developed a good reputation. For adding "punch" to an image, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a simpler solution than Topaz Adjust. But one of the most impressive features of the Topaz Labs plug-ins are their very low price. For only $179 you can get a bundle of five plug-in packages that provide everything from color and tone manipulation to sharpening and stylizing. However, the trick to getting good results from these plug-ins is knowing their weaknesses, and learning when enough Topaz is enough. To learn more, and to see some examples, check out my detailed review.

Shallow depth of field is one of the most important tools in any photographer’s arsenal. Depth of field is the measure of how much of your image is in focus, and shooting with shallow depth of field provides you with another way to bring focus to your subject. The ability to shoot with shallow depth of field is especially useful for portrait and sports shooters. However, achieving shallow depth of field requires a fast lens (that is, a lens that can open to a wide aperture) and you may not always have such a lens with your. Or, you might simply not realize at the time you’re shooting that a shallow depth of field is what the image needs. For those times when you need to remove depth of field from an image, Alien Skin has a Photoshop plug-in that can help.

There are a lot of Photoshop plug-ins out there, but not all of them are especially useful to photographers. Because Photoshop services so many different professions, a lot of plug-ins are designed to create the types of effects and functions that graphic designers, scientists, or filmmakers need. Fortunately, there are also packages like the Tiffen DFX Suite, version 2, a collection of Photoshop plugins that mimics many of the filtering and lighting effects that were traditionally performed with screw-on filters and light modifiers. Given that Tiffen is one of the leading manufacturers of glass filters, it should be no surprise that they’ve created a collection of filters that add real-world filtering effects to your digital workflow.

A signficant part of the visual processing part of the human brain is devoted to face recognition. As such, we’re extremely sensitive to slight changes in skin color – a blush that might show embarrassment, for example – and texture. In addition to good lighting, one of the best ways to make portraits appear more attractive is to do a little work on your subject’s skin, not just to hide blemishes and possibly reduce wrinkles, but to soften and smooth skin texture in general. Imagenomic’s Portraiture 2.0 plug-in is an excellent one-stop tool for performing sophisticated skin corrections.

If you’re a photographer, then there’s a good chance that the most signficant announcement of the year is not a new camera or new lens, but the release of Photoshop CS4. While Photoshop can’t turn a crappy photo into a masterpiece – you still need decent gear and a fair amount of skill to capture a good image – it is still the best tool for realizing the final vision that you had when you shot. Photoshop serves many different disciplines from photography to design to research, and Photoshop upgrades often add features that are of little use on the photographic side of things. And while CS4 packs a few new items that most shooters will have no interest in, the new features are largely additions that all photographers will be interested in