Following this weeks Lens-Artist Challenge on WP I was scrolling through some of the challenge posts. One of these was from /ˈsnæp.ʃɒt/. On Keith’s blog (it’s well worth spending some time there) I found a reference to taking pictures with a Game Boy console using a Game Boy Camera.

That really appealed to me, I’d never heard of that before, and I started researching taking images with a Game Boy and found this YouTube video about doing just that. From there I began trying to get my hands on a Game Boy and the camera. I’ve subsequently found a camera for £15 but sourcing a Game Boy Console is still a work in progress. They’re not difficult to get hold of, I’m just weighing up my options.

In the meantime I found an action set which replicates pixelated console images. It’s not as good as it would be using a Game Boy, to get the images, but It’s been quite good fun running a few pics through the actions. Some work and some don’t. Here’s a link to the action sets. Some are free and the bigger expanded pack costs $7. Pixel art Photo Actions. Hopefully I’ll be uploading some genuine Game Boy images, in a blog, sometime in the near future.

I’ve been a long time user of Photoshop Actions as part of my workflow when I’m post processing images. Mostly, I use actions I’ve created myself, for saving images when I’ve finished working on them. Using the action saves repeating a lot of photoshop processes, that are always the same, and it saves me lots of time. My most used ‘save function’ action runs like this:

• Change the image mode to 8bit (I do this because some actions further down the chain don’t work in 16bit mode. I’m not a techie photographer. I know nothing about 8bits and 16bits)
• Change the colour space to SRGB from Adobe. (SRGB looks better on screens)
• Save an image to a directory as a TIF (just in case I want to edit it after saving).
• Save another copy of the image to a directory as a jpg.
• Run another action (within this action) that optimises the image for Social Media posts (this is a free action, I downloaded from MCP called MCP Facebook Photoshop Action Set. It resizes the image to 960px on the longest edge, changes it to 72dpi and then sharpens the image for screens).
• Save the resized web image to another directory on our Apple Cloud account so I can access it from my ipad and phone.
• Close the image.

That’s seven processes completed in seconds. Actions are really simple to create, (its two mouse clicks and deciding on a name) and there are plenty of web tutorials on this.

I have a few action sets I’ve downloaded from the web. There are loads of them out there. Most are free and a bit of a novelty for a while but there’s a few I’ve used a lot. The MCP action sets for resizing images for web use has been invaluable, and its free. You can find it here: MCP Facebook Photoshop Action Set

---

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.