I got such nice comments about the coloring on the Wordless Wednesday photo I posted on my photoblog yesterday, that I’ve put together a Photoshop tutorial for it. Please stop by and let me know if this is of benefit to you or if you’d like to see more like it in the future. I posted it on the photoblog because that’s where that particular WW was posted, and also I can use larger images there.

This week I stepped into a role I never imagined I’d fill: wedding photographer. My sister got married on Sunday, and she asked me to take the photos. Apparently this sort of thing happens often when you buy a nice camera. Unfortunately, I haven’t mastered my digital SLR and made some amateur mistakes, but with nearly 900 photos taken, there are some nice shots. I think a total of 5 different people took pictures with my camera, since they thoughtfully decided that it would be nice if it looked like I attended the wedding, too.

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[Please note: This post involves a Photoshop tutorial and I don't know if it will translate well to other programs. If you aren't a Photoshop user, it might make your eyes roll back in your head, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for that. Proceed at your own risk: you have been warned.]

I love taking pictures, and I recently decided to start watermarking some. A reader asked me in comments how I made my watermark, so I thought I would share it with you.

I am the queen of the Google search, so I looked for something like “watermark photos” and came up with this handy tutorial at freetimefoto.com. I worked through the tutorial, but then I saw and downloaded their watermark Photoshop action.

At first I didn’t like it because it made a big black box in the corner of my photo, always seeming to cover something important. Then I thought of the perfect fix: decrease the opacity of the rounded rectangle, or black layer, to 50%, thereby letting the photo show through the watermark. Instead of running the action each time, I saved the .PSD file (with the watermark customized with my URL) and stored it in the folder where I dump all of my blog photos after they’ve been doctored and resized for the web.

When I want to watermark a photo, I finish my photo editing and resizing and then open that .PSD file. I drag both layers (text and black background) into the corner of my photo. The cool thing is that you can drag it to either corner and it will work.

Examples, you say? Here you go!

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My aunt and I saw this tree while walking through a park today. Neither of us remembered ever seeing a flowering tree with blooms this color (although I confess mine have been intensified by The Pioneer Woman’s Photoshop action “Fresh & Colorful”).

Can you identify it?

Check out even more green on my new photoblog.

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Visit me today at the Homeschool Blog Awards site for my Better Blogging review of a sweet new service for online photo storage, sharing, and editing: Adobe Photoshop Express.

I am breaking in a new computer - transferring, uploading, downloading, installing, you name it - and I’m trying to get all of my Photoshop presets back again. Tonight I’ve been recording actions for black and white, vintage, and sepia photo conversions, and I thought some of you might benefit from these links. Photoshop actions enable you to “record” a series of steps that you can playback later at the click of a button. Here are links to tutorials for creating some of my favorite Photoshop actions. The most important thing I can tell you (and it seems to be missing from many tutorials) is to always begin the recording of your action by choosing “Image > duplicate” so that you edit a copy and not your original image.

I like having these actions because I prefer to photograph in color and then convert to black and white or sepia. It’s a lot easier to remove color later than to add it. Here is the picture I used, a recent shot of my three oldest boys:

Cute, huh? With the benefit of sports photographer Dave Black’s black and white conversion, which “replicates a historical Black and White look and feel to an image,” I get this:

Next are a pair of sepia actions from photoshopsupport.com. The first uses the Photoshop sepia tone filter:

And here is a sepia effect created by converting to grayscale and applying a duotone:

Last but not least, here’s a vintage photo effect:

I love Photoshop actions because once recorded (you can also download them at places like Adobe Exchange), you can do so much with photos with only a click of a button. Enjoy!