How to achieve these lovely tones?

[momentcapture]

Hi Everyone

I'v been trying to work out how to get similar tones to the beautiful images below, whatever I try just look flat and awful.

Here are the links

WARNING: Some of the links below contain some tasteful nudity.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soul2sq...in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soul2sq...in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soul2sq...in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soul2sq...in/photostream

Thanks

Rhys

[Tony W]

All these links report sign in required.

[momentcapture]

Sorry I'm not sure what I can do about it, maybe because the user has some nudity in his portfolio flickr makes you sign in?

[momentcapture]

Below I'v added some links from a different site of some different examples, hopefully people can view these...

http://photos.modelmayhem.com/photos...7b85c9003b.jpg

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo...nygvo1_500.jpg

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr....1gKrPFHQcnM%3D

http://photos.modelmayhem.com/photos...7b80e13410.jpg

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo...nygvo1_500.jpg

[kav]

Several of these are heavily backlit obviously which I think is where the sort of flared look is coming from. You can approximate it in photoshop but this does in fact look like flare from the lighting. Quite a bit of what you are seeing is lighting. The highlights are very broad/diffused as you'd get from natural lighting or oversized artificial lighting so unless you operate at a very high budget natural lighting would be ideal. In the two where you have a good view of the eyes you can identify a large light source and something reflecting to fill the lower portion which would support my theory here. If I wanted this effect I'd work on perfectly nailing the lighting, then play around with them in capture one or your image processing software of choice. As a "starting point" for the warmer ones pull down your saturation a little, increase the white balance 1k or so above a neutral rendering, and use curves to dial in any casts you measure within the shadows.

[Tony W]

As kav said in the first instance lighting is key followed by image processing. It should be possible to approximate 'the look' by using curves to adjust contrast and balance and if required desat. with Hue and Saturation layer.

The most important part is your starting image - why not post an example of what you have for this and your edited version and what you would like to see?

[Rust]

Can also try to add a solid color adjustment layer color #000066 set to exclusion blend mode. Opacity 20-35%. Gives the picture a warm haze. This is done after you get the right lighting. Good luck