I love what Adobe products allow me to do with my photos. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Photoshop skill-set (despite having taught an introductory course on it) to pull off the kinds of things I see other amazing photographers doing. Add to that fact that I am not a full-time pro photographer, but have full-time jobs as a software developer, husband, and father, and you probably understand that my photo-editing time is quite limited. Enter Adobe Lightroom — amazingly fast and easy, versatile, with all the tools I normally would use Photoshop for, without the CPU burden and steep learning curve.
Why would I ever use Photoshop again? Because there are still things that Lightroom can’t do. Many of the eye-popping results the best digital photographers get can only be achieved in Photoshop, often using “actions” they have either created themselves, or purchased (e.g., Totally Rad Actions, aka “TRA”). Given the amount of time it takes to properly record and tweak actions, many pros find it useful to buy actions, given the huge amount of time (time=$) they save, and the fantastic results they make possible.
Well, Doug (Boutwell, maker of TRA) is about to release another fantastic Photoshop plugin/tool, known as “Dirty Pictures“. Don’t worry the social conservative in you — Doug just has more of a sense of humor than most of the software developers I work with. The tool takes your pictues and adds tone and texture to give it a certain feel. Check out his video, posted on his site and also on YouTube. You can also see the work of one of the beta-testers, complete with “before” and “after” pictures.
