Getting that High-Fashion Desaturated Look

The technique involved in the three images of Aliona followed a blog entry called “Pure White Portrait Retouch” which was quite easy to follow and created a beautiful result – of course it helps to have a beautiful model too! This is a look that you will see in almost any fashion magazine. Basically the workflow involves creating several adjustment layers – a Photo Filter, Hue/Saturation and one or two Curves, depending on your image. I do not do people photography very often, but it is nice to try every now and then. This is a very simple but effective technique to use on portrait images.

I created SJ-Light Desat Portrait action that can be downloaded – it will take you through the workflow pretty quick. You will have to make your own brushes but they are nothing special – just low opacity and a 10% hardness in most cases. The action tells you what brush you need to use where for each step. Hit Stop and do the the step and then click the Play button on the Action Panel to continue the action.

This is a sculpture by an unknown artist at the Lightner Museum in the old historic Alcazar Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. I applied this action to the image but set the Saturation to -59 in the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Otherwise the default settings were used to get this look. I was surprised how nice it turned out.

The St. Augustine Greeting Center has just a bare hint of color except in the palm tree fronds. The action was run on this image and then in the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, the Master Saturation was set to -47, Greens Saturation set to +50, Blues Saturation set to -100 and Cyan Saturation -100. That was it – a very clean desaturated look with a selected color only showing.

Definitely try this look. I was surprised by the versatility of the action – not just for portraits! I will keep this one in my arsenal of Photoshop tricks! Enjoy the Action!…..Digital Lady Syd