Doug Boutwell » Totally Rad Actions

Totally Rad! Dirty Pictures Sneak Peek

Doug Boutwell — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:25:09 +0000

Since we’re getting close to having all the gremlins ironed out, I thought it would be a nice time to post a little update on just what the hell I’ve been up to for the past couple months… mostly a LOT of javascript coding. What we’ve got at this point is a VERY useable and stable program for grunge-ifying your photos with textures. Part of what has taken so long is that I keep coming up with cool ideas for the whole package. When we started actually building this (about a year ago! Yikes!) all I wanted was a way to apply a texture to a photo with the click of a button, the way the rest of our actions work. Since there’s no way to do that with just a plain action, we started looking into other, more complicated ways of automating Photoshop. Next thing you know, we have thumbnail previews, a library manager, configurable defaults, etc, etc. Our little set of action/textures suddenly has become a whole different animal – not quite a full-blown application, but certainly a more configurable, user-friendly, and powerful tool than we had envisioned.

All that is prologue, however, to actually SEEING what I’m talking about, so if you are still reading this far, go ahead and check out this little preview of what Dirty Pictures is all about (and apologies for the somewhat annoying mic popping…):

[See post to watch Flash video]

Update – It’s ALIVE! Head on over to Dirty Pictures at the Totally Rad Store and pick it up!

New TRA Recipes Site

Doug Boutwell — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:04:33 +0000

The best thing to happen to the Totally Rad Actions in nearly a year just went online at www.trarecipes.com. We’ve showcased over 160 awesome ways to use the Totally Rad Actions (and counting!) with before and after examples, step-by-step recipes and instructions. Browse recipes by the actions used, by genre, or by the action set required. Vote on your favorites and discuss the recipes with your fellow rad photographers. Whether you shoot portraits, weddings, landscapes, or fine art, you’ll find tons of inspiring examples for how to transform your images using the Totally Rad Actions. Best of all, it’s 100% free!

Check it out at www.trarecipes.com!

TRA Recipe Contest Winners

Doug Boutwell — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:50:05 +0000

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who entered our TRA Recipe Contest this past March! We received way more entries than I thought we would, and to the extent that it’s taken a while to pick winners, that’s my excuse (well, that and a 2 month old baby boy and a hacked website, but that’s another story…) Also, I had intentions of emailing everyone personally when I got their entry to thank them, and since the number of entries swelled pretty fast, I never got around to that… so once again, believe me when I say that I appreciate the time spent in preparing and submitting the entries – thanks!

Lastly, we are so stinkin happy with all the photos submitted that we’re busy preparing a new website to host them all – it’ll be both a showcase for your raddest images, as well as a place to go for inspiration and ideas on how to get 100% from your favorite Photoshop actions – the Totally Rad Actions! Look for an announcement hopefully sometime in May this year.

So without further ado, here are the winners we’ve picked for our first ever TRA Recipe Contest:

1st Place – John + Kimberly Sanderson, Lancaster, PA

John and Kimberly will be receiving the DREAM PACKAGE from Into The Darkroom.

1st Place

The TRA Recipe:

TRA – Bitchin B&W (as is, no changes.) (If wanting image to be B&W)
Special action I made called “Buttery” (see below) made up of exclusively TRA actions:
Very Mild B&W texture added for grain.
Serve warm straight from the oven.

“Buttery” Recipe.

Oh Snap (as is, no changes.)

SX-70 with layer set to 45% opacity.

Cinnamon toast with layer set to 47% opacity.

Boutwell Magic Glasses (as is, no changes.)

2nd Place – Teri Fode, Sacramento, CA

One Year in the Wedding Chicks online directory, and one month on the site’s front page.

2nd Place

The TRA Recipe:

Photo Prep:

Basic levels/curves
Liquify and Healing Brush for skin/flaws
O Snap100%

Photo Art:

Flareup Golden 100%
F/Zero 100% for Background / 47% foreground / 0% subject
Saturation Brush: 35% yellow areas (dress/building/flare areas)
Grainstorm 100% (erase out skin)
Len Flare (create a dup layer and select 50-300mm under Filter > Render > Lens Flare @ 99%)

3rd Place – Christine Berry, Huntsville, AL

Christine wins a brand-new ShootSac, with her choice of custom cover.

After

Before

The TRA Recipe:

Yin/Yang
Select-O-Sharp
Pool Party 100% (minus curve torture layer)
Get Faded (summer) 30%
Warm it up Kris 54%
Get faded (winter) 37%
Pool Party 50% (minus partial desat layer)
Sharpen for web 2X

Thanks again to everyone who entered, and to our generous sponsors for the fabulous prizes! The contest was so much fun that we might just have to do it again sometime… until then, keep shooting, and keep rocking the Totally Rad Actions!

Infa-Red Without All The Hassle

Doug Boutwell — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:23:00 +0000

The latest in our blitz of new video tutorials features two actions from TRA2 – The Revenge that do a damned good job of emulating infa-red film… which is a good thing, since they don’t make Kodak HIE anymore, and the images from digital body conversions still require plenty of tweaking in post anyway. So we offer our humble alternatives in the form of In-Faux-Red and Lith-E-Yum, which you can learn all about from the video below!

[See post to watch Flash video]

Fake Front Swings And Tilts With f/zero

Doug Boutwell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:39:19 +0000

So here’s another video tutorial I’ve been busy working on, this time on the very confusing f/zero family of actions from TRA2 – The Revenge. f/zero was so named for two reasons – one, it’s meant to give you a set of tools to isolate your subject using selective focus… if f/1.2 makes everything but the subject go to mush, then f/0.0 must be infinitely better, right? Second, I always liked the old SNES game by the same name:

Anyway, I hope I don’t get sued over the comparison, because I was pretty fond of the name for the action. Basically, this video shows you how to quickly emulate the look of lens tilts and swings (or the use of a t/s or PC lens, if you have never had the pleasure of using the real thing) to accomplish a reasonable fake of selective defocus using those tools.

So for everyone out there wondering what the heck those actions were for and how they’re used… this one’s for you!

[See post to watch Flash video]

3 Actions That Are Meant For Each Other – No Brain Required!

Doug Boutwell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:17:48 +0000

Just finished a really quick little video on using “Orange You Glad You Didn’t Say Banana”, “Greetings From Paradise”, and “Wish You Were Here” from TRA2. Now that I figured out how to workaround the weird artifacts that Compressor was producing on the left side of the video, I’ll be finishing up with the other two I was working on…

[See post to watch Flash video]

Having issues with the TRAs? Try The Totally Rad Forum!

Doug Boutwell — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:31:20 +0000

There’s yet another great new resource for getting the most out of the Totally Rad Actions (well, it’s a small one right now, but it’s a start). Go to www.gettotallyrad.com/forum for a whole slew of troubleshooting tips, quoted from emails I’ve answered in the past. I don’t have any plans for making this an active community for photography discussion (Jeff Caplan does wonderful job of that already), rather a place where some of the problems and solutions I’ve helped people out with can be accessible to everyone else as well. Enjoy!