Damien Symonds

What are the pixel dimensions of the files?

Actually, this one might be better - I opened up the tree a bit more.

Had a play with your raw file:

Once you do get your raw processing right, you'll find the NIK results are much more satisfactory. By the way, make sure you mask the effect off the child's face. If you look at the gallery of Santa photos, you'll see that the skin remains "normal", if you know what I mean. It doesn't have the effect applied.

I hope, one day, you'll understand.

How did you go?

No, I will not help you run when you clearly don't yet know how to walk. You have SERIOUS problems with your workflow.

This is an excellent question. The way I do it is to group all the layers above the BW conversion layers. Then I can just turn the group off and on to see the edit.

I know you don't! This is catastrophic, don't you understand?????? The whole purpose of shooting in raw is to harness the amazing power of the raw data. You MUST do your comprehensive editing in a raw program BEFORE taking the photo to Photoshop. You're KILLING the quality of your photos.

Weird.

How did you go?

See in the options bar, beside "Rule of thirds", there's a little cog? In there, there'll be an option to "Use classic mode" or similar wording. That should solve the problem.

Ok, then may I see a screenshot with your Crop Tool selected?

Ok, what about if you turn off the Crop step in the action for now. Does it make a difference? I promise, the action works perfectly. Since something is going wrong, it means you didn't follow the instructions to the letter. Somewhere, you missed something.

Ok, can you choose your Crop Tool, then look at the Options Bar. I think maybe you have the "Delete Cropped Pixels" box unchecked. It must be checked at ALL times.

No, that's exactly right. That's exactly how it should look at that step. You need to re-record the Place step, that's where the problem is.

Download the PSD The initial combo of Channel Mixer and Levels was almost enough by itself, but to polish it off, I found it needed the addition of the two Handyman Method layers as well.

Ok, may I see a screenshot of it? Your whole screen, including toolbars and stuff, thanks.

And have you made doubly sure your watermark file is RGB?

Ok, great, then you shouldn't need to change the Fit Image step at all? My default setting should already be 720x720, yes?

This is the best I can manage. Do you think it's ok?

Great. And have you jotted down all your relevant info, the way I did here? http://www.damiensymonds.net/images/actions/wmact16.jpg

Hi Emzy, which one of the four actions are you using?

I just want a nice raw edit. Not too dark. Backdrop extensions and stuff, don't matter right now.

Please please PLEASE take the Raw Class. This needs to be SO much better, if you want to have any chance of achieving the look you desire.