Needless to say, I love sports and ESPN. I am a big fan of ESPN.com and visit it almost everyday. I have always been fascinated by their photography and it got me thinking- hmmm Photoshop action script – about how they process images for the website. The photos jump off the screen and far exceed the color quality of rival sites.
My subconscious always directs me back…
So it got me thinking and you’re going to like what i have to share with you! I went ahead and scripted a Photoshop action script that will turn your good photos to great photos. I combined some of my favorite adjustments for you in one simple action in Photoshop. All you need to do is press ‘play’ and it’s all done automatically.
Always process copies of your images in case you are not completely happy with the results and make another effort with compensations.
Installing the Photoshop action script is easy. From inside Photoshop, go to Window/Actions to open the Actions window. In the upper right corner, pull down the drop-down menu and select Load Actions and select the HiDef3 color Photoshop action script. Click the Play button and presto, you’re image is done and ready for placement.
The resulting image is in sRGB and ready to be imported into Adobe InDesign.
Yes, the image is in RGB, however you do not need to convert your images to CMYK. Watch this RGB to CMYK tutorial and automatically convert all your images to CMYK upon exporting press-ready PDF. A remarkable workflow that will save you a tremendous amount of time and improve your color quality on press.
Drop me a note HERE and I will personally send you the HiDefColor Action Script…
Please post your feedback below in comments…
[learn_more caption=”Transcript of Video” state=”open”] Hi. This is Rick Rys from HiDefColor.com
Today’s tutorial is going be a quick instructional video on using the new Hi Def 3 action scripts within Photoshop to automate your image processing.
00:17 Inside Photoshop CS go under the window and select actions. In the actions window you want to select load actions and navigate to where you downloaded your Hi Def 3 Photoshop action script file.
00:35 Mine here is on the desktop, select the file, click open, and now the actions are ready to be used. So from here we’re going to open a couple of files.
01:02 Now with this action script, this action script will automatically assign Adobe 98 RGB color profile to your images. The Adobe RGB color profile is a much larger color gamut so your colors will be much more vibrant. I do not recommend using this for portrait photography. Use the sRGB color profile for portrait photography.
01:26 I will be uploading an action script Hi Def action script with the sRGB color profile in the next few days. So from here we want to go ahead and ignore the missing profile. The image will be brought in and simply select the Hi Def 3 action script and click the play button.
01:49 You’ll see the process is automatic. We have a much much greater better color balance here we got much more vibrant colors and notice the definition. Inside the images are incredible details. Almost giving the look of three-dimensional look because you can see here that the quarterback here is almost jumping out at you from the background. You see the background here the depth of field is much more greater than the original photograph.
02:22 Let’s take a look back here in our history and look at the old picture. This is what was published but with the simple action script this is what you could have seen. Some people may look at this and say is too sharp. Keep in mind, this is very important, when the image goes into the RIP – raster image processor – in prepress, and gets converted into a screen – with an FM screen we are running – the image automatically will soften up.
02:52 So to give you a better idea, look at it at the sixty-six percent and it will give you an idea of how that actually will look when printed. You can see it’s cleaned up a little more here and again very sharp.
03:04 And compare with the old, to the new, this’ll give you true high definition color in your next printed project. Combine this with the Never Convert to CMYK video at HiDefColor.com and your images will be saved with the correct RGB profile and converted to CMYK during the export out of InDesign.
03:29 Well, thanks for tuning in. Have a good day. Take care…[/learn_more]