Anybody here know how this guy does this? It looks sharp but soft, colors muted and glowing. Cool effect imo.

http://www.staythisday.com

In his website, he does talk about using "near" infrared filters to achieve a certain glow. Is that what you are noticing? BTW, his work is awesome.

Cheers
Dave

I had a bit of a play based on his discussion of his technique and this is my first attempt at achieving something similar (photo from StockXchange).

* Bottom layer: Background (the original)

* Next layer up: Channel Mixer adjustmentlayer, "monochrome" checked, +100 Red, +100 Green, -100 Blue (experiment with different settings). Opacity set to 65%.

* Next layer up: Copy of background layer with Image -> Adjust -> Channel Mixer (use same settings as for Channel Mixer asjustment layer), then Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur (use a value that looks right - here I used 1.9 pixels). Blend mode set to Luminosity. Opacity set to 32%.

I played around with that penthouse tut I found on here and made an action to do these.

I called the guy and asked for tips. He didn't return my call.

If you mean like this then...

Duplicate layer - guassian blur (quite a lot)
change layer mode to soft light.

New gradient map layer - colours I used were
Dark R67 G58 B49
Light R247 G240 R233

Changed opacity of gradient map to 80%

Christine

Leah - thanks for the technique. Now I have to figure out how to make it an action. :)

Brad

Wow. If this guy had photographed my first wedding, she and I might still be married :grin:

Sorry I don't have a clue how he does it, but thanks for posting the link to his site -- his work is inspirational.

By George, Leah, I think you've got it! Although I think some blue sky in the picture really helps to 'make' the effect, I think. This is the water wagon from a recent Creative Interpretation thread by DannyRaphael at

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9379

I ran it mostly unchanged through Leah's recipe, although I left the final Opacity value at 81% -- it just looked better to me. As always, some additional tweaking wouldn't hurt, but this sure looks like it's headed in the correct direction.

Interesting thread. I used Christine's image (hope you dont mind).
So here's my creation. I used 2 layers of high pass, screen blend, and one median layer, luminosity blend. All layers lowered opacity.

I also used Christine's picture (I too hope you don't mind...)

I think the main points of the procedure used are:

partial desaturation, brightening and softening...

I used Hue&Saturation to partially desaturate the picture.

Created a Shadow Mask (Ctrl+Alt+~ > Luminosity Mask, Ctrl+I > Invert > Shadow Mask) Ctrl+J copied it on its own Layer.

Set the Blending of the Shadow Mask Layer to Screen, blurred it very strongly.

Duplicated the Blurred Layer, set its Blending to Soft Light

Adjusted the Opacity of the two Blurred Layers.

No problem with using the photo, I'm sure Nicola will be delighted when she see's them.

Here's another picture from that wedding if you fancy another try.

Christine

Thanks, Christine.
The image is taken from the website http://gal.mvc.ru/.
I tried to achieve a soft muted effect by using the pattern stamp tool. First I prepared the image with these steps:
Layer 1 - Fill layer with white 100% normal blend.
Layer 2 - Dup original -luminosity blend - opacity 60
Layer 3 - Dup orig -screen blend- opac 70
Layer 4 - Merge all.
I made 2 patterns -- No1. was of layer 4 with g'blur and median filters to soften image. No.2 was of the original treated with level adjustments to brighten.
Working on Layer 4, and using a soft airbrush for the pattern tool, i lightened skin areas with No 1. pattern, and brightened flowers and dress with No.2. pattern.

could you explain to me/us how you make those patterns . I think you come closest to the moody look. thanks in advance A.

Looking at the site - there is a particular characteristic I noticed. Most of the backgrounds seemed to be nicely and softly focused.

Some of the images might have been shot like that originally by using a very long telephoto lens set to a low f stop. This produces a sharp central focused area but anything 2 to 3 feet further on in the image suffers from the lenses natural depth of focus blurring effect. If you shoot with a 1200mm lens - all of your images will look sharp in the focus point - and velvety smooth in the background. It is a very nice soft technique.

The second thing I noticed is that some images seem to have selections made around the couples and then the background seems to be selectively blurred by using Photoshop filters such as the camera blur filter or the gausian blur filter. This inverted selection technique allows the couples to remain in sharp focus - but the background can now be made any degree of softness you want. You can also selectively choose what parts of the isolated background you want to be sharp or soft by using a layer mask to control what is sharp or soft in the background area.

You could also easily apply a hue/saturation adjustment to the images to make them look desaturated - and the Photoshop Diffuse Glow filter makes images look beautifully soft and especially glowing. Both of these effects can be applied to any specific part of the picture at any strength level by masking techniques.