Early in March I received an Email from Sleeklens about reviewing their Landscape Adventure Collection workflow for Photoshop. In essence it is a collection of Photoshop actions with the aim of making Landscape Photographs faster to process. The results are good, as long as you take the time to learn the workflow. It is also important to keep in mind that this set of Actions will not make you a better photographer, nor can it fix a bad shot. You have to start from a good photograph in order to get a good result.
The basic workflow is that in your Actions menu you will now have a Sleeklens Category with a bunch of actions you can run. They are sorted into sections such as Exposure, Tone, and Creativity. Basic sections that also explain what the actions do. You select your action and then run and adjust the settings, usually by lowering the opacity or creating a layer mask. You can also change settings on adjustments layers to fit your vision. The last step for each action is to Flatten the image. Then you can repeat it with a different action.
I found that there were a few basic actions I used on almost every image; Clarity, Color Pop, and Dark Dreams. If the shot feature sky I will usually use an applicable action from that section.
With four quick to run and configure actions you can go from a raw image to a processed one. It is faster than processing the image by hand, although nothing will ever be better than your own custom actions. Sleeklens tends to produce good results within its intended usage. It even does alright with photographic subjects that are not its intended such as macro shots of berries.
I like the speed of processing Images with Sleeklens. The results are usually better than I would process an image to myself. The collection of Actions are really easy to use, and the defaults are adequate in most instances. Overall the workflow is fast and easy to use, with good results.
There are a few things that I dislike about the actions. It pains me every time I have to flatten the image, hoping that I set everything correctly. Some of the actions have a tendency to create blown out highlights.
The Bottom line; When it comes to changing your workflow you just have to try a different way. Sleeklens has a bunch of different action sets available if your more of a Lightroom person they have those available as well. Heck if you want Sleeklens will even process your photographs for you. If you want to give Sleeklens a try they do have a free bundle of actions you could try out first.
I use Photoshop CS6, and the collection worked for the most part. CS6 lacks the new (added with the Creative Cloud) Adobe Raw Filters that are used in some of the Actions. In this case I just unchecked the Adobe Raw Filter so the action would skip over it. This created an extra step the first time but once it is set up you are good.