Damien Symonds

Just to reiterate, if you're ending up with 1MB jpeg files, pat yourself on the back. It means you're shooting beautifully clean images.

It's ok, you must have done it right. If you had imposed a resolution, the dimensions would have been rounder numbers than that. For many labs it is, yes. But when you're cropping to 11:15 shape, you're doing so because you're NOT printing. Therefore, 300ppi has absolutely no relevance. Excellent! Then all is well, you have nothing to worry about. Actually, you do have something to worry about - all your old files are MUCH too big. 7-10MB is outrageous for jpegs. It means you must have forgotten to remove the noise. http://www.damiensymonds.net/2015/08/about-jpeg-file-size.html http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/07/raw-noise-removal.html Do you mean the sharpening class?

And that's the same (or similar) to the other files that saved at the 7-10MB size?

This is REALLY bad. You must NEVER impose a resolution when cropping to 11:15 shape. If you only have 1GB of RAM, it's a wonder your computer even starts up. Are you sure about this figure? Yes. Yes you are.

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?