Please help, i'm a beginner retoucher

[mnlprods]

Hi everybody. A friend asked me to make his picture look like this:



He didn't know how to call it, but i think he means that crisp and golden look, that you can also see during the movie, like the californian sun.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Tom Mann]

In the world of video production, changing the color for artistic effect (eg, to enhance the intended mood of the scene) is usually called "color grading":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading

Towards the end of this article is a nice list of programs for video color grading. Adobe's recent change in it's licensing / marketing policy to it's "Creative Cloud" scheme has made one of these, "Adobe Speed Grade", much more accessible. A nice writeup of the previous (CS6) version of this program is here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/116...es_powerful_advanced_video_color_grading.html

Achieving color changes of this sort in still photos is vastly easier. One can, of course, do it with the native tools built in to Photoshop. For example, one can achieve a very similar warm look in a photo by simply running it through either Lightroom or ACR and adjusting the color temperature sliders to whatever degree pleases you. Inside of PS, one could use one of the warming "photo filters".

In addition, there is a *huge* array of third-party actions, plugins, and stand-alone programs that produce similar effects. The warm look that I think you are referring to was, and may still be, very popular among wedding photographers. Here is a list of just a few of the many Commercial Plugins that do a very good job with color changes:

Tiffen DFX
Nik Color Efx Pro
Topaz ReStyle
Power Retouche Pro
Color Mechanic Pro
OnOne Software's "Perfect Effects"

There are so many free plugins and actions available that I couldn't even scratch the surface -- just Google terms like {photoshop free actions color romantic} and similar descriptive phrases. Some of these are good, with others, you get what you paid for, LOL.

HTH,

Tom