PP help!

[nemophotos]

Hey All!
I thought I posted a thread but it's not showing up - maybe because I attached photos??

Anyway - I am a new mom and want to get better with photography to take pics of my little butterbean. I have a digital rebel, photoshop CS3 with a fairly good knowledge of it (with exception of color stuff), and contemplating lightroom (that's where I need your help)

Where should I get started for post processing? I would love links to tutorials for using lightroom or photoshop for color correcting. I am also looking at portrait professional. My sis uses it and it's pretty cool.

Does anyone use actions?? Which ones?? Where can I find good ones?

And finally - can anyone tell me where to begin to get my pictures looking like PictureLily Photography ? I love that very washed out, pale skin tone look. I would kill to see her raw images and the PP images to see if it's mostly in photoshop. Anyone use something like this and want to share theirs?? I'm just curious to see how much is done in photoshop and how much is just really killer lighting.

Thanks everyone!!

 

[Garbz]

Starting with actions is a sure fire way to fall right into a trap of making the same crappy edits over and over again.

Start with basics, tone control, colour correction, sharpness, black and white conversion; learn to use the software, and not to use someone else's idea of how they think photos should be edited or achieved.

Have a look around youtube, there are a lot of video tutorials on photoshop. Lightroom Secrets is also a good site with a lot of hints of how to get the most out of Lightroom, but it won't help with basics.

I suggest open a photo in LIghtroom play with every damn slider and every option you see. Should take a good day to get through it all. Note the difference, try to identify what combinations of settings do what.

 

[UUilliam]

The Picturelilly photo,
You CAN create a new layer, fill with white, lower opacity to about 35%
or you can use Brightness / contrast and increase the brightness...
there is allot of way to do it tbh
There is more than one way to skin a cat?:S