12 Incredibly useful and handy HDR ready-to-use Photoshop actions for instantly improved photo effects. Fix dull, lifeless and dark photos in seconds! As you can see from the preview file, some actions give higher contrast HDR effect (designed for particularly dark photos), others add an artistic touch such as outline, noise here is a brief overview of what’s included in your download:

• Action 1 – Mild HDR effect, fix shadows and dark areas, enhances colors
• Action 2 – Classical, intense HDR effect
• Action 3 – Moderately mild HDR effect with sepia colors scheme.
• Action 4 – Very mild HDR effect, fixes shadows and unlit areas, adds artistic light noise.
• Action 5 – Very intense HDR with extreme colors enhancement, designed to fix extremely dark and colorless shots.
• Action 6 – High contrast B/W HDR with mild glow / blur effect
• Action 7 – Colorful HDR with semi-visible noise (less visible noice and more colors, compared to action 4)
• Action 8 – Highly artistic HDR with dark outline and vertical strokes.
• Action 9 – Highly artistic HDR with overall dark blue scheme and emphasis on light areas. Fixes shadows enhances colors.
• Action 10 – Vintage-HDR. Add stains and spots to your HDR effect, get artistic and very beautiful result.
• Action 11 – Intense HDR , and very visible glow / blur effect
• Action 12 – HDR + Noise + light sepia + even shadows, last action is once again classed as a more of an art-HDR, makes the tones even adds a vintage-style color

After you have successfully loaded the actions, just play around and enjoy! All the 12 actions are stored in 1 folder called “HDR pro”, click the arrow to collapse the menu with all the actions.

I am also enclosing 2 sets of examples, based on photos I took myself, together with the original images (unprocessed). Feel free to use them as a base or use them anywhere else, crediting me is You will notice that, just like any HDR photo effect, it works best for dark, dull and lifeless photos, particularly – landscapes, however, I tried them out also on portraits and other photos – in any way the result is incredibly impressive.

If you have any questions, please drop me a line.

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As we promised about a month ago, we will be releasing more freebies , so here is one small but useful freebie — Photoshop action that makes a very nice vintage effect.

This action will not only add washed effect and sepia  tone to your photo, like most standard actions do, it will also fix any dark areas you have on the photo (like the black dress curves you see on our example), will add a few layers on noise, one standard and the other imitates small mild scratches. Moreover, there are a several layers of colorization, which allows our action to output a photo as close as possible to the professional photography of the past decade.

We hope you will enjoy this action and please do leave feedback, as always we appreciate any requests and ideas, as well as critiques.

The download contains 1 action, and 3 examples of (1) photo with high contrast and light background, (2) photo of good contrast and light background, and finally (3) dark background photo, so you will see what this free action is capable of. If you’d like to see more of our PROFESSIONAL Photoshop actions, please have a look at our earlier released “12 HDR pro Actions” and “Photographers’ Tool Kit” actions.

A closer look at our example:

And processed image:

Download Free

As you probably know, today is the famous Valentine’s Day, when all the loving couples celebrate and spend time together, or singles confess about their love. It’s also the Chinese New Year (for those of you who are traditional enough to celebrate), so we decided to gather some resources that will help your design skills to celebrate these merry occasions.. Enjoy the freebies and most important — the day itself!

See also 28 Free Cards – Sweet Valentine Greetings & Chinese New Year eCards

Free Valentine’s Day Icons:

Learn Photoshop…?

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

After there were a few complaints about the previous action we released where people could not get the colors to work right, we decided to fix this bug with out new “PSWISH Action 4 pro”, which works on fixed colors defined in the action itself. You are going to love this one, really. Any boring, dull, lifeless shot you have can be turned into a vivid, professionally retouched photo, just like you sometimes see in photography showcase galleries but have no idea how they have done that. So what does this action actually do? First of all, it fixes contrast, so dark photo become vibrantly yet naturally bright, however, we don’t use any mask layers to fix the dark fields. Next, it adds light rainbow overlay of colors that blend in perfectly with the content of your original photo. lastly, it adds very mild grain / sand effect, which as you know is very popular among professional photographers.

If you want to share this action, please link to this page, and not to the direct download. Also, needless to remind not to sell, offer free or redistribute this action under your own credits. All credits for this action creation are reserved to LoreleiWebDesign.com. Photos used below are stock photos are are used for demonstration purposes ONLY.

Click on the following examples, to full view. As always, downloading is 100% free.

Although we post a lot of tutorials that teach you how to turn your ordinary photos into professional shots, many of us still get stuck and end up playing actions. It only takes seconds and the result is often very impressive.

With so many ideas and experience I have, I decided it would be a shame if I won’t release a set of actions to help the readers of PSwish.com and LoreleiWebDesign.com, so here is my first release, PSWISH 3 Action (pro). Please note that this action is for personal use one, and cannot be resold or redistributed on other websites.

Instruction:

• The action will work best with LIGHT photos. Any area that is slightly dark will turn black.
• The final result’s color scheme of the photo is determent by your Background and Foreground colors set before you played the action. Play with different variations to see what works best for you. If the results turn to be too dark or too reddish, set both foreground and background colors to lighter hues. Alternatively, hide the dark clouds layer when the action is finished playing (which makes the shot significantly lighter yet keeps the professional touch the action applied).

I use CS3 so I had no chance to test it on CS2 or lower, if anyone does, please drop a comment below so that other users will know if it’s suitable for other versions or not.

What you can do with this Photoshop Action?

This is idea for retouching photos with dull colors, or those that turned to be too light and as a result — uselessly boring. It will help you to turn any ordinary shot into a professional, “old school” photo with very strong contrast, slightly cold colors and grainy texture that is pulled from photo itself, and applied without using any additional grain effect. Like I said, if the result turns to be nearly black, this means your colors were too dark, because if you hide the clouds layer (should be one before last) — you will get good results but without this beautiful dramatic dark grain.

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Looking for nice looking web 2.0 gradients could be a pain. Most of them just won’t look good when it comes to implementing them into your design. Luckily, some talented people out there do take the time and effort to release free Web 2.0 gradients for anyone. Thanks to Jakub Nowaczyk, you can obtain a free PSD file of the Tango gradients. 9 splendidly looking gradients, idea for use in web design and any sort of graphic that need to look truly sleek.  The gradients come in 9 classic colors – Butter, Orange, Chocolate, Chameleon, Sky Blue, Plum, Scarlet red, Aluminium light, Aluminum dark.  Installation:

Put the .grd file into the folder:

MAC: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Presets/Gradients

or

WINDOWS: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop\Presets\

To load a file, go to the Gradients palette, then click the small arrow in the top right corner and choose one of the gradient sets collections from the menu. Enjoy!

Download | Release Page

There are quite a few trends in web design right now. Some still use a lot of twirly flowerly ornaments, others, following the trends dictated by psdtuts.com and abduzeedo.com have proceeded to glowing lines and starry psychedelic effects but the problem remains with creating the shape in the first place. While some designers, like myself, prefer working with Photoshop shapes, it looks like brushes are still a far more popular and accessible tool for many, so here are the top 10 brushes releases for Summer 2008, which can help you greatly in your artwork or web design.1.  Twirly Glowing Lines Photoshop Brushes

2. Abstract Glowing Lines Photoshop Brushes

3. Scanlines Photoshop Brushes

4.  Da Vinci Tarot Cards Photoshop Brushes

5. Old Maps Texture Photoshop Brushes

6.  Victorian Botanical Photoshop Brushes

7. Enchanting Flowers Ornaments Photoshop Brushes

8.  Slightly Oriental Ornament Photoshop Brushes

9. Halftone Grungy Photoshop Brushes

10.  Bubbles Brushes for Photoshop