The Amelie Effect

So I've been recently playing around in Photoshop to try and enhance some of my photos (especially since I still have a Canon Powershot A630, not some fancy schmancy digital DSR...). One of the best effects I've found replicates the enhanced colors from the movie Amelie, which is one of my absolute favorite (FAVORITE) movies.

Cool trick: if you have Photoshop, you can download free "actions" that will enhance the color of your pics for you! Then you can look at the actions step by step and see exactly how it was done.

Check out the Amelie-ization of Lumpkin:

Before...

After....

And now for a close up shot!



Before...

After...

Pretty sweet, huh?

It makes me want to go take shots of downtown Pleasanton and Livermore just to Amelie-ize them. :) 

If you'd like to Amelie-ize your shots (I know, I'll stop saying it now), you can download the Photoshop action here.  To play with how dramatic the effect is, you just adjust how opaque you want the effect by adjusting the opacity % of the top layer (the one with the effect).

You can also find the actions step by step here.

There you go. Amelie-ize (sorry) away!

Update:  I played around with the first photo and upped the Vibrancy. I think it makes it much more Amelie.  What do you think...?