Curves...

This post is dedicated to Lainey, who is a fabulous photographer and just started using the curves tool.

Do you know these beautiful photo effects that you can get using actions? Like getting a modern, greenish tinge or a faded rosy look?

The good news is that you don't need actions.
The bad news is that PSE is not good enough, you need (the very expensive) Photoshop. Or the (quite cheap) PSP a.k.a. PaintShop Pro. Or (the free) GIMP.

You can find about everything in the web, the only thing you need is to find the right words feed Google. Since it took me a while, I'll save you the bother and give you the links straight away:

SOOC (original photo, straight out of the camera)



Cross processing simulation:



Another one:


And the faded, vintage look:




Both tutorials are for Photoshop, but just find the curves tool and you can easily repeat the steps in PSP.

Start with the faded vintage, which is the quickest one to get the hang of it.
I only discovered how to do this today and am in love with it, expect lots of vintage looking photos in my scrapbook layouts from now on. :-)

This is how to get the look for the first photo. It gives great results for both b&w and colour photos.

I can't find the tutorial on how to repeat the 2nd photo, but it is similar to the one above. The red and green channels should look the same, but the blue one should look like an inverted "S".