Actions !!!!!!!!!

Has everyone noticed the abundance of emerging companies selling actions for post processing, my question is, is it a lazy way of editing or a clever way of editing.

I take great pleasure in working on photos in LightRoom and PhotoShop and rarely tend to use presets or actions (are they the same thing ???) .

At the end of the day an action is someone elses post processing put into a presentation box and sold on to you.

Tell me your thoughts and why please.

I agree with you, but I do write some actions that allow for a bit less repetitive steps. I tend not to like canned ones, or presets, if they don't allow a lot of input and control on my part

For my Ir the first part of my workflow I uses 'action'...duplicate...noise remover[ir is very noisy]...auto levels...channel swap....and then I finish the processing.
That action saves me a lot of time not to mention my fingers.
When I processed my raw images and they are transferred into CS5,I uses an action to save them where I want to save them...very fast.

Do you have an action for the green writing?

I don't use actions...unless I created it. (resizing, watermarking etc..)

However, I do know a "photographer" who is in LOVE with photoshop actions. She destroys her photos with the actions. She said it's the best thing.

Stealthy Ninja wrote: Do you have an action for the green writing?

I use rose colored glasses...

I use my own presets and actions. They tend to be non-special effect sorts: resizing, sharpening, starting points for processing, etc.... Very handy for batch processing. When I do use special effects I rarely save them as actions and presets, because I end up needing to tweak them for different photos anyway. I may want the same look, but if I'm starting with a completely different photo it usually takes me a different path to get there.

I've never purchased any actions or presets. I can only think of one that was created by someone else that I occasionally use: Eddie Tapp's Softar filter. I got it out of Rangefinder mag many years ago. I do think that with processing experience it's pretty easy to figure out what's in those paid actions so I'm not going to buy them. I do use the occasional plug-in, but it has to offer plenty of personal control.

As to whether its lazy or not... For the last 125 years 99% of photographers have accepted the processing presets built into various films and dropped those films off at the lab for standardized processing and printing. Using store-bought actions seems at least slightly less lazy than that IMO. Photography is lazy in general. If we were hard workers we'd be painters! The hard work in photography since film was introduced has always been finding or coming up with an intriguing scene or subject. Fancy actions, whether store-bought or homemade, really won't make a boring photograph much more interesting. In the end I am only going to be curious as to how a photograph was created because I'm a photo-geek. I will judge the finished work entirely on how it moves me when I look at it; I don't care if it's a handmade, labor intensive photogravure or a cell-phone Instagram.

Yes Stealthy its called move the mouse

Some interesting responses folks, thanks for the replies, Matt you covered some ground there and I agree with most of what you said , Charles I share your rose colored glasses , Mr ninja you crack me up,



This has been written in red just to confuse Adrian I believe if you have a toolbox you should use the tools in it, thank you Alex.