CoffeeShop "Golden Hour" Photoshop/PSE Action!

We have had a fairly gloomy winter this year and I am craving sun, so I decided to write a new Photoshop/PSE action called "Golden Hour"  that I can use to warm up my images. This action has a gorgeous golden hour tint and customizable sun glare. I hope you love it as much as I do!

You can use this action on any outdoor image, and it even looks amazing on portraits! If you run it on landscapes or still life images, you probably won't have to make too many adjustments to the layers. If you run "Golden Hour" on a portrait, it usually looks best if you paint some of the layers off the skin. I have a step-by-step tutorial showing you how I edit a portrait using "Golden Hour" below.

You can grab this action along with hundreds of my other actions (including exclusive ones found no where else) in one download in my CoffeeShop Action/Preset Pack. It is on sale right now, read all about it here. Purchase of this pack support my blog, so thank you so much!

Images used in this post: (Woman, Forest, Woman in Field).

CoffeeShop "Golden Hour" Photoshop/PSE Action Tutorial:

(original image)

Open your image and run the CoffeeShop "Golden Hour" action.

When you see the Gradient Fill 1 layer, click OK.

A beautiful Gradient Fill Sun Flare is applied to your image on the top as seen in the screenshot above. 

You can click and drag this Sun Flare anywhere on your image. You can also make it bigger or smaller by adjusting the Scale setting.

When you are done adjusting it, press OK.

This is the image after the action finishes running, no adjustments made. 

As you can see in the screenshot above, many of the layers are turned off. These layers can be turned on for a more dramatic Golden Hour edit as I will demonstrate below. You can also turn off some of the original layers if you want a more subtle edit. 

You will have the turn on/off each layer to see what changes you want to make in your own edits, but I will show you what I did for this image.  

I have turned on all of the layers and as you can see, this version is VERY dramatic. In landscapes such as the example I posted at the post of this post, I love the drama and I usually don't make many further adjustments.

In this portrait, I love the background colors, but I don't like how her skin looks so dark and orange. I can easily adjust this by painting on the layer masks and changing the opacity of layers. 

In this example I started editing the lower layers.

I slightly lowered the Golden Hour Tint 2 layer's opacity (90%), clicked on its layer mask, and used a soft low opacity black brush to paint some of that layer off her skin.

I didn't change the opacity of Golden Hour Tint, but I did remove some of it off her skin.

I painted some of the Drama layer off her skin.

I lowered the opacity of Drama Extreme to 75%, and then painted some of that layer off her skin.

Now on to the Sun Flare layers!

I started with Sun Rays Plus and  lowered the opacity to 75%.

Then I removed a little of that layer off her face by clicking to select the layer mask and using a soft low opacity black brush on her skin.

Finally, I reduced the Matte Effect layer to 80%. You can also open this layer and adjust the setting of the Level's curve for further contrast adjustments.

I love how this edit turned out! If you use this CoffeeShop "Golden Hour", I would love to see your edits on my Facebook page.

Download the CoffeeShop "Golden Hour" Photoshop/PSE Action!

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 all the actions/presets and professional design elements, storyboards, and textures.

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

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