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Muted Colors/ Photography Question

Well, I usually don't post over here( ) But when I DO have a question, I know the right place to come! Ok, so I've been experimenting with some muted colors for my photography, but can't seem to achieve the look I want.

Here is the look I am trying to achieve: http://www.dananeibert.com/portfolio/portfolio.html
(Note the muted colors, high contrast of the first 4 images).

I've tried using various color overlays (blue, yellows) via adjustment hue/saturation layers on "colorize" mode, but can't seem to get the look I'm looking for.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Hmm.. I have you an answer. But it probably ain't right and sure ain't easy.

It's not as simple as an adjustment layer, I don't think. In short, Color Balance is kind of the magic bullet for a lot of cool looks and such, but it looks like the whole image doesn't play by the rules of the same Color Balance settings.

Look at the kite picture. Everything's real dull and yellowy, except for the kite. It's real colorful. So I think you've got to look at your photographs and decide where shades of different colors would look good.

& don't forget that dude's probably using some pretty nice equip. good luck.

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Jon Culver Chia Pets

Thanks Sparky! I took this shot, and did my best to emulate the look with some aggressive processing, but Its far from being spot on:

If you look closely at each of the pictures, there's a slight vignetting at the edges. That makes each photo look even more washed out than it is. I'll have a go at this and tell you what I've done. I'm thinking about increasing the contrast, lowering the saturation, and then adding a 20% opacity layer of white over it.

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Ok, here's what I did:
1. Open photo (obviously), mine was 800 X 600 <---important, ok?
2. New layer 1
3. Fill new layer 1 with WHITE
4. New layer 2 (above new layer 1)
5. Select all
6. Select > Modify > border (50px)
7. Select > Feather (50px)
8. Fill selection with BLACK on new layer 2
9. Change new layer 1's blending mode to HUE, change opacity until colors look muted enough
10. Change new layer 2's blending mode to MULTIPLY, change opacity until vignette looks right

And that's about it.

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Originally posted by redline:

Well, I usually don't post over here( ) But when I DO have a question, I know the right place to come! Ok, so I've been experimenting with some muted colors for my photography, but can't seem to achieve the look I want.

Here is the look I am trying to achieve: http://www.dananeibert.com/portfolio/portfolio.html
(Note the muted colors, high contrast of the first 4 images).

I've tried using various color overlays (blue, yellows) via adjustment hue/saturation layers on "colorize" mode, but can't seem to get the look I'm looking for.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

Hi redline, Hi everyone

I looked at the photos in question and would like to say one thing

Some of this "look" in the photos is acheived by natural light.
natural light can be simulated in photoshop, but it will never be exactly the same.

photoshop can do many things, but it can't imitate the quality of light that is some pictures.

good luck with it,

randy