The good people at Sleeklens were kind enough to send me a copy of their Portrait Perfection Collection of Photoshop actions to test out over the holidays.
The Portrait Perfection Collection is a bundle of 56 different Photoshop actions which are designed to help you adjust the colors and tones of your images helping you achieve a professional finish. It is compatible with Photoshop 4-6 and Photoshop Creative Cloud, it works with both Mac & PC, and works with both JPEG and RAW images.
Putting it to use
I took an old image of Neymar that I took at the 2015 Champions League final after Barcelona defeated Juventus. I took the original RAW image with only a crop applied brought it into Photoshop and ran the “BASE – From Scratch” action. Bellow you can see the before and after:
So that right there on it’s own is pretty impressive. With the click of a button the action from Sleeklens took my image and improved it considerably. The original was slightly underexposed and the action addressed all the areas I would consider working on. The eyes, hair, and skin have all been lightened. The headband is whiter and has less of a blue tint to it.
From an editorial point of view, if you are mainly delivering to newspapers I would say that this image with clicking just one button is done and ready to delivered. However the wonderful thing about these actions from Sleeklens is that you can easily combine them and build towards an more stylized effect.
In the example below I took a picture of my friend Luca and started with the same “BASE – From Scratch” action. I then went on and applied an action called “ENHANCE TONES – Autumn Love.” After applying the action I brought down the opacity of it to about 35%.
This time we achieved this with just 3 mouse clicks. I purposely left the effect a little strong, so it can be observed, and you see it better next to the original, but it’s would be pretty easy to continue to fine tune it. Perhaps brushing it down on certain areas like that face.
Conclusion
I’m very impressed with this collection of Photoshop Actions from Sleeklens. With over 56 different actions it is packed with options that can help you take an image from it’s RAW out of camera state to something that is polished and finished. The fact that the collection is designed so that actions can be used in tandem building up effects and looks just highlights the depth of this bundle.
The Portrait Perfection Collection is available from Sleeklens for just 49 dollars. Go check it out, I think you will really like it.