Free Color Enhance Photoshop Action Set

[gmitchel]

I posted a new Photoshop action set for enhancing the color in your digital images.

The TLR Enhance Color action set is a free download. It lets you selectively lighten/darken specific ranges of color (reds, greens, blues, cyans, magentas, yellows). It also includes actions for enhancing skin tones (you can warm or cool them) and for simultaneously warming highlights and cooling shadows.

This is intended to be part of a larger TLR Professional Photographic Effects Toolkit. The entire toolkit will be free to the Photoshop community.

There are twelve different actions for darkening/lightening specific color ranges (reds, greens, blues, cyans, magentas, and yellows). The actions create action sets/groups in Photoshop CS/CS2. Each creates two layers. One to lighten/darken and the other to boost saturation. The layers are 25% opacity to give you lots of control over the effect.

There are two actions for enhancing skin tones. One warms skin tones; the other cools skin tones. They also use two layers. One for color balance. The other for a slight saturation boost. The color balance layer is 50% opacity and the other is 25% opacity.

The final action simulataneously warms highlights and cools shadows. It creates three separate layers. One to warm highlights, another to cool shadows, and a third to maintain the original luminosity. The warming and cooling layers are 75% opacity. The layer for maintaining luminosity is 100% opacity.

These actions are more efficient than similar actions in PhotoKit Color. The TLR Color Enhance actions use adjustment layers rather than pixel-based layers. This reduces the memory consumption and the size of the resulting files. (The one exception is the luminosity maintaining layer in the cool/warm action, which is pixel-based.)

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/photoshop-tools.htm

Comments and suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Mitch

[maureeno]

Mitch, will this action tool work with PS6? One more question--if it will, how do I load and use it?

Thanks,
Maureen

[gmitchel]

There is a PDF in the ZIP file that explains how to use actions generally. Also, there is a .TXT file with instructions.

It should work in PS6. I don't recall any PS CS/CS2 or PS 7 features.

The first step in each action makes a layer set/group. Earlier versions of PS should ignore it. If not, toggle it off. The .PDF file explains how.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Mitch