Warm Define Photoshop Action

Since nearly every photo that exists of me was taken at night, on a phone held by someone about to down their ninth tequila, I wanted a quick way to sex up the resultant evidence without any hassle, so I made my first action in... years. Years and years. Christ, I'm getting old.

Despite the fact I designed it working around dark, badly shot images, it works quite nicely on other ones as well. As always with this sort of thing, the better the original, the better the effect.

I wanted noticeable changes but nothing over the top. This will tighten your levels, lighten your blacks, add a small amount of purple to the shades, increase vibrancy, apply a light sharpen and finish with a vignette round the edges.

Anyway, some tips. I made this in CS6 so can't guarantee backwards compatibility. I think it should work, but no promises.

It'll only work properly on a background layer.

Since other filters that end by flattening an image annoy the shit out of me, this will leave your original be and have a new separate layer for the 'new' image so you can compare.

If the effect is too weak, run it again. Too strong and just lower the opacity on it whilst keeping the original underneath.

Any questions, ask. If it looks like you haven't read this, I might shout at you. If it's reasonable, I'm not a bad guy.

If you do use it, it'd be nice to hear about it so I can check out the results, and it'd be nicer if you told others about it so they could come and have a go themselves.

Right, that's my good deed done for the day. Now frak off. I have cylons to watch.

edit. SERIOUSLY? dA has a fucking category for Photoshop actions and I have to zip the thing up before they'll accept it? For fuck's sake...