Regarding Chapter 37 on ICE Society (by the way this is a free chapter for all to experience www.theicesociety.com)

QUESTION: I have, likely a very simplistic question. In your workflow setup, you have setup some of the common use actions for your editing. I have picked up on the copy/paste and flatten, but could you share the others?  I am relatively new to the PS world, and I have found your style and approach very appealing to my style of work.  Thank you for the great videos and commentary. They speak volumes to me.

Thanks Tom this is my basic action set.  remembering I designed these around a HIGH VOLUME portrait studio the idea is that I want to achieve the quickest most efficient photoshop

1: before we proceed if you are using actions and you select the actions and then go down and press play to action the action go the the top corner of your action box you will see four little horizontal lines click on it and select button mode.  This will take you to a one button selection and you can change the colours which make them very easy and fast to use also it’s now just one button instead of two.  I cannot believe how many people still don’t know this amazing.

Rule of thumb with Actions set them light if you need more you can press a few times and ANYTHING on Photoshop that requires more than one button press you can set an action for

LIGHTER DARKEN AND VIBRANT so easy I have set these in Curves one stop lighter one stop darker and then Vibrant is mid point down on the blacks half a stop and up on the lights half a stop this gives me instant punch.

COPY PASTE  and FLATTEN both self explanatory (Top menu IMAGE down to the bottom of the list FLATTEN) so much faster as one button same as COPY PASTE edit copy edit paste or Apple C Apple V so much easier these two functions you would have noticed on the video I used repeatedly in slimming.

DUPLICATE IMAGE  and SAVE AND CLOSE  Duplicate image I set to drop layers on and work in multiple stages I do not use layer mask and I only work in one layer OH i know I can hear the gasp but honestly this is so much faster I did a photoshop demonstration for Photographers once and this guy came up to me and said “You have bastardised Photoshop” I said thank you smiling but really its about speed and volume for a studio doing 10 to 20 shoots a week.  Save and Close of course is straight forward, when I work on groups of prints I will batch save and close and walk off for coffee

ROTATE LEFT and ROTATE RIGHT this is for design purposes I do all of my own design website brochures etc

DESATURATE and BLACKNWHITE Apple U or Ctrl U for PC is Hue and Saturation desaturate is -10 saturation for that slightly mono look you get on portraiture and the black and white is -100 saturation then add contrast.

COLOURS Apple B or Ctrl B 10 towards each colour.  Fastest way to correct with the eye.

and lastly the best fun actions you can play for filters and effects are

www.gettotallyrad.com Totally rad actions are amazing great website to recipes and support

www.jeshderox.com has gorgeous portrait actions and so does www.sheyerosemeyer.com eye candy actions . . . beautiful have fun play