So, I'm in love with the way that these photos are processed. I've tried to recreate the look myself to no avail; I've played with the exposure levels, shadows and highlights and different filters (HP, etc.) but I'm just not finding the right combination.

Any ideas on what it is they are doing?

try desaturating overall and then taking some of the weight out of the blacks.
the images are fundamentally high contrast images due to the lighting (hard sun) but the density of the images is quite low.
just shove the end point of your RGB curve in the shadows up and use the hue/saturation to adjust the saturation

Hello Morph,

There are SO many ways of doing things in photoshop and everyone has his own method. This could have been done while shooting, using a filter or it could have been done in post production, or done in photoshop. It could also be a photoshop filter. I am just guessing. I played around trying to achieve the same effect and came up with this. If it is what you are looking for then I will try and explain step by step how I did it.

Hey guys,

Thanks - that comes close. There's one more image that I think shows it the best, unfortunately I can't post it because the model is bare breasted in it.

Basically it almost looks like a shine of some sort; as if it were printed and you're looking at the printed page in bright light.

I think that you've done a close job of it - but it's more than highlighting, it's somehow doing something to the blacks as well.

If you want to give me some tips on how you got your finished pic I'd love to do a mixture of both of your ideas.

lee_the_flea


I like your retouch, very interested to go through your tips.

best regards,

Hello,

Its not exactly the easiest to explain and rather messy. I made an action and I am trying to go through it to remember .... ok .... I duplicated the layer and set the blending mode to screen. I probably set the opacity to between 30 and 45 %. I then merged the layers and duplicated the image and desaturated the duplicated image to about 30 %. You can play around and see what works best for you. Then ... image - adjust - photo filter ... you can choose yellow or deep yellow and play with the density. I think I used about 20 %. I then dragged the one image onto the other and either set the blending mode to screen once again or I just used a soft brush (erase) and brought back the more saturated colour from the the layer below. I might have done another image - adjustment - photo filter - deep yellow (play around) or you can just stick with the desaturated duplicated image with the added photo filter and play around with that. Once you have achieved a nice pale, desaturated and slightly yellow image you can drag this final image onto the original image and bring back the original eyes and lips as the filter makes these quite yellow. I also brought back some hair .... I know it sounds like a mess but I was basically playing around with layers and duplicating images and then combining those until I got something I was happy with. Play around and see what works for you. Hope this makes sense ... ??

my method:
Duplicate the background layer 2 times bg copy1 and bgcopy2.
select bgcopy1 and converted to black and white them select bgcopy2 and change the blending mode to overlay. and done. if you want to make some changes on the colors saturation, pick the layers and play with opacity.

Hope this helps.

Another nice and easy (QUICKFIX) effect is the following:


filter - render - lighting effects

style: soft direct lights
light type: directional
intensity: I used 20
gloss = 100% shiny
material = 100% metallic
exposure = 39
ambience = 24
texture channel = none

apply

then go to edit - fade lighting effects - and bring it down to about 30% (or play around)
now you have a beautiful, pale, desaturated image with perfect skin. You can always drag the image onto the original and bring back some original detail or you can play around further and add a photo filter such as deep yellow. I did this and then went into colour balance, selcted highlights and added in about 15 yellow and about 7 red, just to make the whites not so green/cyan. I then went into hue and saturation and chose 'red' which I desaturated to about 14 and added in 5 HUE (towards the right)

I then went back into colour balance and selected shadows, adding in about 20 yellow. I also added 10 red. I then went to image - adjust - shadow/highlights and choosing shadows, selected 20% This gives the entire image a golden and warm feel to it. Lets call this final image "AFTER"

IF YOU WANT (and what I did) is drag this new image onto the first one I did in the beginning of the thread and set blending mode to screen and change the opacity to 21 .... I really like this. Lets call this other option "AFTER2"

lee_the_flea
we really appreciated you kind effort, it was very interested/helpful lesson .. many thanks

Diego81
thanks a lot for your smart/quick method.

Habeeb

Thanks Lee the flea!

thanks lee_the_flea!

one comment to your last method:
instead of fading this lighting effect, do it on a duplicated layer in 'luminosity' mode, and then do color correction. It's much easier!

ArtX.

Thanks lee_the_flea.
I´ll try your method.