Sunday, May 11, 2014

CoffeeShop Pure B&W Photoshop/PSE Action and Mother's Day Conniption Fit!



Happy Mother's Day!  It has been a fun one here…  We went on two little trips this week (Galveston Island and San Antonio) so I am doing a pile of laundry this morning (after helping my husband make breakfast and clean the kitchen) and went into Duke's room and had a complete conniption fit. What a mess compared to just last night.  Books, Legos, paper airplanes, marbles, a huge box house with little bits of cardboard EVERYWHERE,  and JUNK covering his floor, bed, desk,  and dresser.

I did what I usually do in these situations and calmly and sweetly started screaming at the top of my lungs and throwing everything down into one heap on the floor while threatening to get rid of all of his things if he doesn't clean up right away.  I think I might have mentioned to them it was my worst Mother's Day ever and I wish I had nice kids that actually appreciated me.  Yes, it has been one of those days…  Luckily Mr. CoffeeShop was outside mowing the grass so he missed the fireworks.

Then I walked into Imp's room….   ARGHHHHHHHHHH!   Please read the previous paragraph once again and add that I might have cried tears of frustration over the fact that my boys are complete and utter slobs while reminiscing in my head about our pre-kid years living in a spotless apartment with no little Lego pieces stabbing into my feet and tiny bits of cut cardboard and paper everywhere.

I know, I hate to rub it in about my perfect life as a perfect mother.  ;-)   Perhaps reading this makes you really appreciate the fact that you don't have a mother like me!  Yet, as I type this I hear them cleaning Duke's room and chatting together happily, and they seem completely unaffected by my tirade.    I guess "hysterical wants-a-clean house PMSing mom" is a common enough occurrence that they are not affected by it anymore.  It sometimes stinks being the only female in this house (other than Blackberry the dog).

I am about to hide out in my room for an hour and fold the clean laundry while watching an Amazon Prime movie.  They are going to be busy for a while so I might get some alone time and ironically enjoy a bit of Mother's Day.  ;-)   Yes, I am really a poster-child for a wonderful mom…  Please feel free to judge me.

So now that I got that out of my system (thank you for listening!), on to the real reason I posted today.  I have a new action I think you will really enjoy running on photos of your beautiful, sweet daughters who have clean rooms and don't purposely get mud in their ears.

I wanted to write a simple B&W action and I am really pleased with this one.  You can adjust it for each image and it gives you a clean B&W edit.  I used a stunning image from Royal Harrison Photography in the "ad" above.


When the action starts you will be prompted to adjust the contrast with a Levels adjustment.  You don't have to make changes if your image doesn't need it.  In this screenshot above I used a beautiful image from Photography by Kelley.

After the action finishes running, you can adjust the "Lighten" layer opacity.  I also sometimes turn on the "Recover blown-out areas" and adjust the opacity.

I hope you enjoy using this new action!  Have a great Sunday.

Download the CoffeeShop Pure B&W action. You can also download it here.

Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop PSE/Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.

For complete info on installing all of my actions, click here.

10 comments:

  1. Haha! I can soooo relate! My house is all male except me and the dog, too. For some reason, they just don't get that a clean house (or at least semi-tidy) makes for a happy mom which makes for a happy household. Sigh! Well, have a Happy Mother's Day!

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  2. Thanks JenL! I just get so darn tired of having to tell them to clean. They should do it on their own free will because a semi-tidy house is a happy house!!! Most days I am pretty calm, but there are times I just really lose it and want to hire a maid and go outside with a good book and let someone else mess with this house. ;-) Happy Mother's Day to you!!! We girls need to stick together.

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  3. I am always suspect of families who come off as some sort of mythical Ozzie and Harriet - always cool, calm, and collected. I tend to wonder what really goes on within these families - away from the public eye.

    I am also leery of those who promote some sort of variation of that myth as to what is "healthy" for children. LOVE is what is healthy for children, but it has to be real. Real Life is a roller coaster.

    It is obvious from following your posts that you indeed LOVE them dearly. (That does not mean you always LIKE what they do.) I believe that is why they are cleaning their rooms and getting on with the day without further ado. They KNOW you love them - and they love you. (No guarantee, however, that you won't find their rooms disheveled again.)

    So Happy Mother's Day... and know there may come a time when you will look back on this day and wish you could go back to it. I'm serious. One day these boys will be teenagers!!! ;-)


    P.S. Thank you for all the wonderful actions, papers, and tutorials you give away freely here on your blog.

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  4. all mothers can relate! but......dont sweat the little stuff....I always ask myself " will it make a difference to anything/one in ten years time?"......if the answer is no.....then I will not stress about it.......and I have made it through to grandparenthood :) Keep up the good work! I appreciate you beautiful actions!

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  5. LOL, I love this! Times that by 4 and you've got our household! The day before Mother's Day we celebrated my 4th daughter's 5th birthday (yep, 4 daughters--AND 4 sons :-))
    and to say that our house looked like it had just barely survived a tornado is the grossest understatement known to man! I would've done what you did, except the kids know the signs of when I'm going to start one of my crazy mama rampages and somehow, instinctively, make themselves scarce, ha! So instead, I said, "Tomorrow is mother's day--don't call me unless a wild animal escapes from the zoo and starts eating the dog!" Thankfully, hubby took over (he KNOWS the signs, too!) and I got to have a (relatively) peaceful and happy mother's day!
    Thanks for all the wonderful actions, tutorials and everything else you so generously put on your blog! Cheers and happy (belated) mother's day!

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  6. I just had one of those "freak out" moments today....luckily everyone was outside so I was just freaking out to myself. Ha!

    Thank you for sharing this action. It is GORGEOUS!

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  7. This is gorgeous--thank you SO much!

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  8. You just proved yourself to be a red-blooded mother. I have 7 kids & my husband & I are neat freaks, so spazzing over messes happens. And I too threaten to donate/trash belongings (once I even told a certain child that he was going out with the trash too). I even had a fight with my oldest on Mother's day! In my card, under where it said "enjoy your day," he wrote "no!" Ha haa! But in the end they know you love them & this is all fodder for when you're older & they tell their spouses all the crazy things you made them do as kids.

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  9. I catch myself reading more than downloading . love your stories lol!! <3 I can clean but when everyone comes home its like the house thew up .... constant struggle ;)

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  10. Lol, we've all been there more than we'd like to admit I'm sure...The only part you have wrong is a daughter being neat and tidy ;)
    Yesterday I watched a friends two boys and I made the mistake of telling my daughter "they can have as much fun as they'd like since their rooms were already a mess I'm sure they couldn't make it much worse". My daughter took that as a personal challenge and as I listened to multiple crashing sounds I proceeded to see what was happening and found my daughter dragging out all her toy bins and dumping them in the middle of her room. Her response when I asked her why she was doing that was "you said we could make as big of a mess as we'd like"...

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Rita