Does anyone know how to get this effect? I see it used all over the place these days but can't seem to replicate it myself. I found these photos on PBase so hopefully PamR won't mind me linking to them

Before Photo
http://www.pbase.com/pam_r/image/36174382

After Photo
http://www.pbase.com/pam_r/image/36174385

Well I didn't exactly replicate what was on the site but what I did was
1.) Copy the Layer
2.) Above Layer 1 place a curves adjustment Layer
3.) Above the Curves Adjustment Layer I placed a Yellow Photo Filter Layer
4.) Above the Filter Layer I placed a Hue-Sat Layer
5.) Above that I placed a black Layer blurred with an oval cutout set at 35%Opacity

In curves I increased the contrast. I decreased the saturation and fiddled with the filter. This set up gives one many dials to play with.

I looked at it and the tricks seems to be mostly in Saturation and Luminosity. There is some hue change, but I think it's negligable due to the saturation manipulation. That is, the hue seems to be mostly changed where sat is rather low.

Saturation Out and In (http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=151)
I would use that to manipulate the saturation.
In the manip in question, the sat changes don't appear to be linear, so it sounds like a job for Curves tweaking.

Luminosity
Copy photo.
Edit > Fill
- Use: black, white, or 50% grey
- Mode: Saturation
That will leave you with Photoshop's flavor of Luminosity.
Set to Luminosity and clip your favorite adjustment layer to it.

That's what I would start with.

Also, it looks like some painting was done.
Kind of like:
Copy photo
Set to Colour Burn
Lower Opacity a tad
Layer Mask and paint out the harsh areas where it shouldn't be harsh.

Hard to say exactly, but it does look like some areas where definitely painted.

The effect is like one created by Andrzej Dragan. I put the url to his website below.

There is also an action created by Sharon Lee Core at Action Central that is truly a masterpiece of thought. With it you can replicate the effect quite easily.

Have fun,

Janet

http://andrzejdragan.com/

http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm

Deleted and leaving this forum due to the actions of member rondon (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/member.php?userid=366)

DPReview has a thread that discusses this technique as well as offers a 10-step Photoshop file with layers walking you through the process.

DPReivew Thread (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=11573502)

The file with layer sets is located here (http://www.apsenniel.com/fl/10steps10-25-04.zip)

It was also discussed here back in July of last year.
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8597

yes...this started at DPreview awhile back when we were trying to emulate an artist named Dragan. If you do a Dragan search on the RETOUCH forum (dpreview) you will get tons of hits. Some look great and some missed the mark. I think most got tired of the thread being that it lasted so long but it was a great learning process.

http://andrzejdragan.com/

There was also an action created. You can grab it here: http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm. Scroll down to Dragan Action.

Deleted and leaving this forum due to the actions of member rondon (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/member.php?userid=366)

Well I didn't exactly replicate what was on the site but what I did was
1.) Copy the Layer
2.) Above Layer 1 place a curves adjustment Layer
3.) Above the Curves Adjustment Layer I placed a Yellow Photo Filter Layer
4.) Above the Filter Layer I placed a Hue-Sat Layer
5.) Above that I placed a black Layer blurred with an oval cutout set at 35%Opacity

In curves I increased the contrast. I decreased the saturation and fiddled with the filter. This set up gives one many dials to play with.

Thanks Phil that seems to do exactly what I want :happy: