Sonder//
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
This collection of actions is designed to really bring your images to the next level and enable you to build a workflow from the ground up. They compliment the new Sonder Lightroom and ACR Preset collection available HERE, but they also will work with any existing actions or Presets you own if you use Photoshop! Whether you are looking for a bold burst of color or a nice painterly feel–these actions make that possible and in the most quick and efficient way! These actions are “helper” actions meaning they are meant to be used like a tool kit of sorts! They are meant to refine your editing and make your work come alive.
Inside are a set of Twenty-Five photoshop actions designed for Photoshop CC! They are all easy to tweak, personalize and adapt to your style. See at the bottom for a few before and afters of these actions with an existing edit so you can get a feel for how they really bring things to life and emphasize your work even more.
The Actions are:
Bit of Magic–Designed to really infuse light and dimension. | Backlight Help— Infuses color and enriches your image. Works best for images with backlight situations. | Brush on Background--This action really helps you mold the light and bring some clean contrast in without drastically altering your colors. | Brush on Contrast–You will brush this effect on to bring richness into your images or add just the right amount of contrast where you need it. | B&W Toner–You can choose from four beautiful tones to add a bit of something special to your black and white images. | B&W Helper–This action will bring depth and contrast into your black and whites. It just gives everything an overall pop. Color Cast Help– A quick way to balance your tones. | Cozy Tones–A fantastic action that subtly warms things up and adds a boost to your image. | Dehazed–Add more drama to your images with this one. | Finisher– MY FAVORITE ACTION and a staple of my workflow. I use this on every session and am finally ready to share because I want you to have it too. This action provides the perfect finish to your images and is subtle, but powerful. | Go Deeper–This is another favorite of mine and targets the shadows and just pulls everything together. | Light & Matte— This is a throwback to the days matte was all the rage, but I still love it, so I added it!! | Light & Warm–Warms up your images and pulls out the midtones to give you just a bit more light. | Little Light–A quick overall boost in exposure | Lush Skin- A skin action designed to help make things super creamy without portraiture while retaining texture. | Paint on Highlights (Skin)— Helps bring down brighter highlights on the skin | Paint off Warmth (Skin)–Another staple of my workflow. This has three different layers that help with redness/orange skin tones and magenta skin tones. You just brush where you need to edit those tones down for a more natural skin tone. | Painted Color Brush– Gives the prettiest pop of color and is more true toned opposed to my previous color brushes. This action has two layers so you can choose how subtle you want the color pop to be. | Pull Shadows– Pull out any harsh shadows with this action. | Soften Background– I LOVE this action for just a bit more creaminess in my bokeh and depth of field. I brush this on almost all my images to give it a more painterly feel. | Soft Contrast + Warmth--Beautiful for golden hour sessions. | Soften Highlights– Brings all highlights down in your image for a more muted effect. This one works best tweaked on your needs. | Sunshine Tones– Warm Sunny beautiful tones to add to your existing edit. | Tone Up– A beautiful warm peachy tone. Warm Overtone– A stunning red based warmth versus the yellow I usually favor. This works beautiful for blue hour too!
