We love the new fashion colours of the images that are being done by so many of the photographers all over the world today, I know I love them. I love the muted colours, the hard flash contrast look and the old fashioned film looks, just to name a few different styles.

I have created a set of actions that you can use on any image quickly and easily.

Actions in order from left to right, top to bottom:

1. Original
2. Sexy Split Tone V1
3. Sexy Split Tone V2
4. Vintage Fade
5. Polaroid
6. Coffee Stain
7. Freeze
8. Hard Flash Black & White
9. Hard Flash Colour
10. Fashion Colour Film
11. Fashion B&W Film

You can also mix and match the actions together to create even more different looks:

Action reciepes:

1. Vintage Fade + Fashion Colour Film
2. Fashion Black & White + Coffee Stain
3. Hard Flash Colour + Freeze
4. Hard Flash Black & White + Fashion Colour Film

Last week I had the pleasure of shooting with my wonderful friend Andy.

He is such a gorgeous man, inside and out. His inner beauty really shines outward and I hope that I captured it in its entirety.

We played with the light, using coloured gels for the background, with fantastic effects.

Here’s a few of the images from the shoot as it was hard to pick the best of the lot.

Last night, I had the pleasure of shooting with Ash.

For his first time in front of the camera, I think he did incredibly well. He fell into poses very easily and it was a pleasure taking photos of him. I look forward to future shoots with him

Here’s the best of the shoot:

Today I got the opportunity to shoot with little Alex. He is SO incredibly adorable.

He’s the sort of child that you just want to take as million and one photos of coz he’s so cute!!

It was a great experience taking photos of him. It also showed me that I need to be a bit more relaxed with my lighting when it comes to shooting kids as they have a mind of their own, which is fine by me

Here’s my favourite images from the shoot:

Last night I had an opportunity to take photos of my friend Sharlin. She is so incredibly gorgeous, happy and full of life. She just lights up the room and it was a pleasure taking photos of her.

She did so well for her first time in front of the camera. We had a lot of laughs and got some incredible images.

Here’s the best of the shoot:

Again, what you see is what was in camera, so the photoshop of these images is minimal

Over the long weekend, my close and dear friend Spyke came over and we had a play in my new studio space and experimented with the lights and different poses.

He is such an incredible model, always able to fall into the right pose so easily – I love working with him so much!! Can’t wait for the next time.

Here’s the best from the shoot:

The most fun was trying to get all the images perfect in camera, so there was minimal photoshop done to all of these.

A big thanks to everyone who entered the competition!! We have a winner – username: Bert. He has the choice of any one of the AllyKatDesign Actions FOR FREE that you can find here in the shop.

Also I have a sneak peak for you – Beauty Retouching Actions.

I have included before and after samples of the action.

The actions are designed to help you cut down on your retouching time by doing all the fiddly work for you. There will be a few different choices of effects such as adding a tan and different skin glow effects, including the famous Jill Greenburg glow effect.

It might be an old technique that has been around ever before photoshop. It has been used in films and photographs to highlight an important aspect. Remember Schindler’s List? But its still popular in wedding photos, baby and toddler images and artistic images in general.

Colour is an important element that helps expressing emotion and attracting attention. Colour can amplify an important element in an image, when it is used as an accent in a black and white picture.

There are many tutorials out there in the world wide web that show you how to achieve this effect, but say you have many images to convert?  These days, time = money. So here’s a easy and brilliant solution to save you time (and money).

I have developed 7 actions that will do the selective colour for you.

Tickle Me Pink

This action targets all the pinky magenta tones in an image, while converting the rest of the colours to black and white.

Feeling Blue

This action leaves the blue and the cyan tones intact while converting all the rest of the colours to black and white.

Green With Envy

This action leaves the greens and a bit of the yellows intact, making the rest of the image black & white.

Purple Haze

Pick out all the purple shades in an image, leave all the rest in black and white.

Seeing Red

Takes too long to mask out red rose petals on the sand or in a bouquet? Run Seeing Red to cut your masking time in half.

Mellow Yellow

This action targets the yellows tones, while converting all the rest to black and white.

Clockwork Yellow Orange

This action targets the orange tones in the image and converts the rest to black and white.

Depending on the tones in the image you are running the action on, some images may require more masking than others.

Head over to the AllyKatDesign Shop to get your new actions and for more examples:

Stock Images used (in order):

• Pink Passion ~ Create Stock
• Tamarin Stock 07 ~Tigg Stock
• Model 59 ~ Night Fate Stock
• Purple 1 ~Kikaiyashin Stock
• draper III ~ Voivodess_Stock
• mrs shamrock green portrait ~ DyingBeautyStock
• Fairy Bubbles ~ atistatplay
• Fuchsia ~ TripperHippy
• Red roses 8 ~ Kuoma stock
• 01 ~ TripperHippy
• yellow 3 ~ xstockx
• Bubbles VIII ~ fetishfaerie stock
• Autumn Smiles 32 ~ sd stock
• Summer stock 7 ~ Sitara LeotaStock

With the addition of the new review feature on the AllyKatDesign Shop, I have decided to run a competition where with every review that you leave, enters you into the draw to win a free AllyKatDesign Action of your choice.

Each review you write for AllyKatDesign Actions or Brushes gives you one entry. The more reviews you write the more entries you get. At the end of the competition, all of your names go into an excel spreadsheet, then a random number generator picks the winner

Entries end on 12th of April EST.

What are you waiting for? Go write a review now

Remember. each review helps me hone the products for you the user. Good or bad the reviews help.

Good luck and I look forward to reading your reviews.