Alright serious and aspiring photographers, today we’re getting down to the nitty gritty details of using Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions to create highly texturized images.
After returning from WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) convention this year, I was struck again by how highly valued and esteemed the images were that were composites with muted colors, highly texturized and with a fine art look and feel.
This artistic style is particularly effective with nature and landscape photography, but I’ve certainly seen it used well with portraits and weddings. Much of it is a matter of taste, so the specifications and recipes I give below are just general guidelines so you can see what I did and what is possible.
- Started with a straight out of the camera image shot in RAW format with 50 mm lens, natural light, cloudy day in shade. You can see how dark it is, but I like the detail captured.
- Downloaded into Lightroom 2 and added a Gavin Seim preset along with some general adjustments. See the chart.
- Opened in Photoshop and used Totally Rad Action set to apply actions and modify opacity. Percentages to the right of each action are the opacity settings I used. Each image will vary.
- Used MCP Finish it Actions to add frame and modify color, stroke, and copyright.
There you have it… the complete recipe for my high texture images. I will continue to work with this recipe and tweak it along the way. I’m also going to start creating more recipes in the future to streamline my workflow and reclaim my time!
Share your recipes too. I’d love to see any recipes you’ve created. Or if you try this out on an image, let me know and I’ll post it on a follow up blog article. Also let me know if these recipes are helpful and I’ll keep creating and sharing them!
On Pinterest? 
