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Soft colouring tone request


JosephGibson

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Hi everyone,

Apologies if this has been covered previously.

I have been experimenting for months to recreate these tones but I have thrown in the towel and I turn to you, the experts.

How the frack do I do this? You see those lovely soft tones? I have tried everything that I can think of!

Many thanks for any help you can give

vagrant-circus.jpg
 
Hi JG firstly welcome to the site.
Your question is one that gets asked regular here and most other lesser photoshop sites out there:mrgreen:

In answer it is a mixture of photographic talent, lighting awareness and usage of it, mixing real images with illustrations at times in a manner that renders them as one, layers with varying light and colour tone adjustments applied and a visionary approach to creating new and unseen images in this style.
We have a world famous artist here at times in this specific field of work, her name is Cindy Grundsten, she creates amazing images all in photoshop if my memory serves.

Saying that your image is by Vladimir Fedotko another excellent artist in this field, he is a photographer also.
 
Figured it would have been discussed previously. Many thanks for replying - I'll keep plugging away and hope to discover a technique that works for me
 
Hey JG. I can agree with Paul that these manips are comprised of many different techniques that have lead to the overall tone. Your on the right track by experimenting. I'm certain you will receive a few more comments on the matter.

I have not had the opportunity to experiment myself, but I will try to see if I can come up with a few suggestions. Hang in there.
 
There are several ways one can get close.

To illustrate two of the techniques, I started with an out-take (...can't see their faces, image not dynamic enough) from some work I did just yesterday. I selected this image (Frame #1 in the attached GIF animation) because I wanted to start with an image that was quite normal with respect to color balance, color saturation, contrast, brightness, sharpness, etc.

#1 - This approach only uses PS's native tools. Place a solid yellow layer at the top of the layer stack. Set its blending mode to color. Add one or two brightness/contrast adjustment layers above that to reduce the contrast. This is frame #2 in the attached GIF animation. This only took seconds to do, but if one wants to match the look of your example even more, it would be relatively easy to do. However, one does need a good eye for this, and needs to have a good working knowledge of the native PS tools.

#2 - If, for whatever reason, you prefer a canned approach, for example #2, I started by using the Topaz plugin, "Re Style", specifically, the preset called something like, "Portraits / Saffron Brilliance" with only some very minor tweaking of the sliders. Since I had time on my hands after pressing one button, LOL, and I noticed the fake light beam in the example you posted. I used PS's "Lighting Efx" to also add some fake lighting to the output of the Topaz plugin.

The results are obviously not exactly the same as the image you posted, but then again, the starting images are very different, and that always has a profound effect on recipes like the two above. If the starting images were more similar, if you have a good eye, and if are willing to spend the time, I guarantee you that you will be able to come even closer than what I illustrated.

HTH,

Tom M
 

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  • D7C_1058-LR_to_full_rez_sRGB_jpg-acr-ps02b_sRGB_8bpc-lighting_efx-690px_wide-for_gif.gif
    D7C_1058-LR_to_full_rez_sRGB_jpg-acr-ps02b_sRGB_8bpc-lighting_efx-690px_wide-for_gif.gif
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