Plug-in or Actions

[rockin-photos]

I know nothing about plug-ins or actions, but was hopeing someone could point me to some basics on them, either on TFP or somewhere else online.

Also, I love this Kirk Voclain's work. Can someone tell me what plug-ins or actions he may be using to get these results?

Thanks,

[Steelsun]

I would say most of the stuff is not action/plugin but just great camera work/lighting and hand post processing (saturation and color tweaks).

[photonewb]

he's doing a fair amount of burning/dodging and quite a fair amount of skin smoothing (maybe portraiture)

there's tons of sites on the web for actions and learning photoshop etc. My personal favorite for learning Photoshop has been www.tdpconnection.com

[Rson]

Also, a lot have textures added.

I must say that I am impressed greatly.

[rockin-photos]

In an interview, he said he spends about 90 seconds PPing each photo, because of his workflow and the actions & plug-ins he uses. I guess I need to contact him to find out for sure what he does.

[mom2aidan]

90 seconds!!!???!! I WISH!!!

[rockin-photos]

He said he uses a program called IOpener from ImageFire.com. This program autoloads your images one at a time, and runs Actions while loading and closing each image. It also lets you auto save each image into 8 (I think) different locations, with different attributes (B&W, Sepia, etc.) and it can do different action sets depending on the orientation of the image, which camera it was shot with, etc. Sounds awesome, but I would have no idea what actions I would need or want.

[LadyShutterBug]

i would be willing to bet that his automated workflow includes a lot of bumping saturation and manipulating lights/darks/midtones (levels, curves, etc), some kind of mad skin smoothner action (these people look plastic!), and sharpening.

Kevin Kubota (he's my favorite) has several different actions that could, together, achieve an effect like this... as does Nik... as do many other people who sell actions.

if you don't know much about actions or plug ins...

basically someone sits down and figures out how to make a normal-ish image have a "unique" look. it's a series of manipulations in photoshop. instead of having to do each tiny manipulation each time, you can download their "action" (series of steps), load it to photoshop, then click on that action any time you want to do that set of manipulations to a certain image.

it's like... instead of making lasagna, you order takeout lasagna that arrives at your door ready to go... and you didn't have to go through all the trouble of cooking it.

there are about as many people selling actions... and variations of them... as there are people making lasagna ; )

[DD3]

Looks like what he does can be accomplished with the onOne professional editing software.

[RIDDLER STUDIOS]

I'm sure you've seen this but, in case you haven't:

http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm

Not related to " Kirk Voclain's work " but, some actions for download.

[rockin-photos]

Thanks John. I haven't seen this site before. Do you happen to know which one's are worth downloading? If not, I'll have to download all of them and play with them all I guess.
Thanks