Totally RAD Actions

marikris · September 25, 2009

Tried searching for the topic, but can't find any so I thought I'd ask.

Anyone use these and have you found them worth the $$$ ?

tenoverthenose · September 25, 2009

IMHO, they are good and worth the money. However, everyone has them and everyone uses them. So when you use them you start to look like everyone else.

ShepsMom · September 25, 2009

Of course everyone use them, alone with Kubota, difference?

You can play with every action in the set, to create your own little style, just experiment and see what you can come up with.

Moogle Pepper · September 26, 2009

I don't use them. But they do look kinda interesting.

marikris · September 26, 2009

I was also intrigued by OnOne's photo tools. I think, like RAD, you can also use those in layers together and fade the layers. The big difference being it will take you off Photoshop to do it, and when you hit APPLY on their dialogue box, you'd go back to Photoshop and the layers of the effects just merge into one layer. I think. And the professional edition has 64 Kubota effects.

Hmm can't decide lol.

adbsgicom · September 26, 2009

FWIW, I just realized the OnOne's plugins don't support CS4/64-bit. Missed that somewhere in the purchase flow. Thankfully they have a 30-day refund policy that I'm now investigating...Also, they were having a $99 sale on the tools that ended on Friday. Not sure how often they do that.

marikris · September 26, 2009

adbsgicom wrote:

Also, they were having a $99 sale on the tools that ended on Friday.

Noooooo I missed it...

:bash

I use CS3, luckily, but gosh I missed it by that much lol.

ShepsMom · September 26, 2009

I also use Color Effex Pro 3 on a top of all other actions. Like it a lot for different effects.

cdonovan · September 27, 2009

I find them expensive, so have never gone further than the price tag, check out deviant art, some artists are willing to sell at a fee for for commercial work, and totally free for personal work, just read the fine print!

VayCayMom · September 27, 2009

I have them, they are fun, one of my top 4 action groups. They have a couple of free ones you can download on the site. They just began something that might help you decide if you want them... Rad Recipes!
People send in before and afters and lay out the recipes so you can see exactly how they got to the finished product. That is really worth the while to go look at!!!

I also have OnOne, Kubota ( my first choice) MCP, and a whole bunch more, I admit it, I am a JUNKIE. And when I am depressed I go on the hunt to buy more, like a closet full of new clothes, I have actions I have never used, or even remember why I wanted them

.

GoofBckt · September 28, 2009

Ok, pardon my ignorance, but what the heck are you guys talking about?

VayCayMom wrote:

I have them, they are fun, one of my top 4 action groups. They have a couple of free ones you can download on the site. They just began something that might help you decide if you want them... Rad Recipes!
People send in before and afters and lay out the recipes so you can see exactly how they got to the finished product. That is really worth the while to go look at!!!

I also have OnOne, Kubota ( my first choice) MCP, and a whole bunch more, I admit it, I am a JUNKIE. And when I am depressed I go on the hunt to buy more, like a closet full of new clothes, I have actions I have never used, or even remember why I wanted them .

Moogle Pepper · September 28, 2009

GoofBckt wrote:

Ok, pardon my ignorance, but what the heck are you guys talking about?

It is a set of actions that is pre made for photoshop that lets you drastically or subtly edit a photo on the fly making your post process go much faster.

I personally use lightroom presets, which makes my PP even faster, and with smaller tinkering in photoshop.

GoofBckt · September 30, 2009

Well, not everyone uses them. I didn't even know what "actions" were! lol

tenoverthenose wrote:

IMHO, they are good and worth the money. However, everyone has them and everyone uses them. So when you use them you start to look like everyone else.

Shima · October 2, 2009

Since they don't make these for Lightroom I don't use them. I do however use lots of free presets found on Presets Heavens for my Lightroom wedding photo editing. Love the presets I've found on there, they create some really neat effects with my photos.

bnlearle · October 2, 2009

I LOVE them! I've even been editing my 5DMKII videos with them, actually

Check it out here -> http://bobbyearle.blogspot.com/2009/09/before-and-after-wednesdays-19-tras.html

I also use the heck out of them for my wedding workflow and have my processing posted up on my blog on most wednesdays -> Before and After Wednesdays.

Also, the links on my blog are affiliate links - but all the proceeds are being used to take my 68 year old dad on his dream trip to Africa - so I'd love it if you bought through them

Bobby

marikris · October 2, 2009

Very interesting differing responses. Thank you guys!

I went on Deviant Art and found some free actions (thanks for the tip, cdonovan), then I googled and found some free Lightroom presets. Yesterday I went to a photoshop meetup (free free free) and the organizer showed us how to create our own actions and modify them. Droplets and batch too. (Meetup.com, they may have a photography or photoshop meetup where you live.)

@Shima - those Lightroom presets ROCK!

@bnlearle - went to your links and they are super awesome! And you can use them on 5d2 vids? I haven't tried the video yet lol - one hill at a time. But I'll remember that when I do. When I start getting more paid work, that's something for me to consider!

divamum · October 2, 2009

What is a "droplet"? Yes, I know, I can (and will) google, but just wondering...

zoomer · October 2, 2009

I use Lightroom and presets for 95% of my processing.
There are tons of free presets on the internet.

I have the NIK filters for PHotoshop which I really liked but very seldom use anymore since going to Lightroom.

marikris · October 2, 2009

divamum wrote:

What is a "droplet"? Yes, I know, I can (and will) google, but just wondering...

Basically it's like running a script: you tell it what action to use and if you want to save, you tell it where to save and what extensions to save the file as. It creates an icon, then you drag your folder of images and drop it into that icon and photoshop opens up and runs the script on all the images. It's under File > Automate, beneath Batch I think.

I use the term script because I couldn't figure out a better term for it.

marikris · October 2, 2009

zoomer wrote:

I have the NIK filters for PHotoshop which I really liked but very seldom use anymore since going to Lightroom.

Yea, I realized with my last shoot that I could run the preset in Lightroom and just export a few into Photoshop if I wanted to have more control or layers. I haven't done wedding shoots where batch processing is a must - the most winners I've had are less than 100 photos, but I can definitely see how Lightroom presets would trump over Photoshop when you have hundreds (thousands?) of pics to go through and don't want to kill your disk space.

Shima · October 4, 2009

marikris wrote:

@Shima - those Lightroom presets ROCK!

http://www.presetsheaven.com/2009/02/19/8-epic-lightroom-presets-for-weddings/

Those are some of my favorites, but there are also a bunch of others I love as well that they have on there... Aged In A Box, Childhood BW and Street Fashion for example are 3 others that work great for wedding / e-session shots.

mmmatt · October 5, 2009

I use Totally Rad actions and love them. The Pro Retouch, Pool Party, Prettyizer, and the b&w conversions are great. Many times I run the action and then adjust the opacity of the action layer to get the effect I want or tweak the individual layers within the group to change it up some. Also the Lights On action is helpful sometimes for a one click fix when using other actions that darken the photo a bit.

I have found that the raw conversion does a lot to determine how the action runs and I sometimes will do a raw conversion that alone looks like garbage and then I run an action over it to get the look I want. I also will fully desaturate (not convert to greyscale) the raw images sometimes, and run a color action over the top for a more unique b&w or sepia look. That glowinng sepia thing I do a lot is actually a desat and slightly over exposed raw conversion and then the Rusty Cage plugin over the top of that.

Actions are fun to play with and have made a big difference for me in what I'm able to accomplish in photoshop. People are usually pretty impressed when I can knock out a dozen images with unique processing styles within a couple days of shooting and have no clue that they are basically 1-click processing.

Matt

Jonesy · October 8, 2009

Shima wrote:

http://www.presetsheaven.com/2009/02/19/8-epic-lightroom-presets-for-weddings/

Those are some of my favorites, but there are also a bunch of others I love as well that they have on there... Aged In A Box, Childhood BW and Street Fashion for example are 3 others that work great for wedding / e-session shots.

Those are awesome - thanks so much for posting this site!

I've been looking at Totally Rad actions and was disappointed when I realized that I would need to upgrade my PS to run them. But these are perfect and exactly what I needed!

bnlearle · November 27, 2009

There's a Totally Rad Actions sale today. Ends tonight. Apparently it's the cheapest they'll be until next black Friday, so if you've been wanting to grab them, do it now

Totally RAD Actions

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