Exciting news! I, a girl who never wins anything, except for that plastic container of cinnamon hearts when I was in fifth grade, won a set of Photoshop Actions from the DIY blog A Beautiful Mess right before Christmas.
I’m not amazing at Photoshop by any means, I’ve taught myself slowly for different jobs over the years, and we met a fellow traveller in Australia last year who gave us a copy of the program for our laptop (thanks Jake!) but I would definitely say I’m still a beginner. These Actions are cool though because you just have to pick one, and it automatically edits the image for you.
From there you can adjust the level, and turn certain layers on and off within the Action itself to play with it a little, but it makes it a lot easier.
Full confession, I have been writing for over three years on this blog, and I’ve never edited one. single. image. And not just because I’m lazy (although that’s part of it). It kind of feels like cheating to me? Anything can look amazing if it’s edited enough. I hate when I see a picture of something and it looks incredible, and then I see it in person and I’m like wait… why is this water brown?
But it’s nice to have the option, and I’m having fun playing around with these new Actions.
I picked an image from our trip to Cambodia last year, of a monk sitting on a building inside Angkor Wat and one of us snorkeling near Komodo Island to showcase some of the different options here:

Frankie

Jean

Summer

Georgia

Lula

Spring