How to create dreamy photos with Free Spirits actions

[misserin]

For free spirits and deep thinkers, this lovely set of photoshop actions adds the perfect dreamy touch to all your photos. The nine actions in this set are designed to add drama, haze and an overall hint of pizazz to your memories.

As per usual they are 20% off on Sweet Shoppe Saturday!


I recently had a photo session with the stunning girl shown in the preview and I used these actions to edit the photos I got. They were perfect for helping to portray the mood I was going for.

I'll walk you through editing one of my favorite photos from this session, but first a little back story....

I had been working on this set of actions before I got together with Shelby. It just so happened that when I got home, I decided that they worked perfectly with the photos. I used primarily the actions Fireflies and Wild & Free. The two actions have some similar qualities, but Fireflies is a bit on the warmer side.

During our session, Shelby came up with a great idea to incorporate some fireflies into her photos. I said yes I can definitely do that in photoshop, we just have to capture the perfect dreamy photos to make it work! I always get a little excited when someone I'm working with comes up with an idea that's right up my alley. So we got to work creating some photos and poses that were going to look great with some fireflies thrown in. Ok, onto my process with this photo edit. Here is what I started out with:


I shoot in RAW, so I started by opening up my image in Adobe Camera Raw and applied some usual fixes...a little sharpening (RAW files usually need SOME sharpening applied), a slight tweak on exposure, clarity and vibrance. In photoshop, I ran the Portraiture Plugin to soften the skin some per my usual routine with portraits. Note: I use this plugin by duplicating the background layer and then running the plugin. I then create a layer mask and paint the softening effect on only where I want it. But that's a tutorial for another day! The photo you are seeing above has all my ACR tweaks + Portraiture done to it already.

I then ran the Fireflies action. Fitting right? Haha! This action comes with a spotlight layer and a darken edges layer. They are simply gradients. By default the spot light lands in the middle of the image, however my subject was slightly off-centered. That's an easy fix. In the layers window, I simply selected the spotlight layer and right clicked on it. I chose rasterize layer and then I was able to free transform (ctrl t) the spotlight to land where I wanted it. I increased the opacity of the darken edges layer to add more drama.

With all that done, I created a new layer above the background layer for my fireflies and the light I would add to the jars. I got this free firefly brush from Morgan Burkes Photography that just so happened to work out perfectly for my uses. I used the brush in varying sizes to create my fireflies in a soft yellow color and I also added a little bit of outer glow for a layer effect (double click the layer to open up layer effects). I also used the same brush on a new layer to create some "light" inside the glass jars with the same brush, but I decreased the opacity slightly on that layer so it would look more natural.

And now you see what I ended up with. I love this photo, like have a major major crush on it. This is the type of stuff I get excited about....whimsical, dreamy....that is always part of the vision I begin with on a shoot!


But that's not all! Lots of effects can be created with this set! Here are just a few more examples..






These actions are compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS versions. I know some of you were looking for actions that will also work with elements. Get ready, because my next actions release WILL work with both programs! Exciting stuff I tell ya!

Have a great weekend friends, and I hope you capture some important memories while you're at it. It's a rainy weekend here in my neck of the woods.....might be a good chance to sneak up on my kids with the camera around the house!