Obtaining this effect...?

[starsmending]

Hi everyone!

I have, many a time come across effects such as the following. It's so minimal, but I really like it and see it almost everywhere. It makes me wonder if this is a certain camera, certain lens, a photoshop effect -- but it's sort of hard to explain. It seems "lightened" (mostly the blacks) somehow with little contrast. I have tried to imitate that in Photoshop without luck, so I have been thinking it is one of the other things I mentioned.

Please lend me your thoughts on this.

Some examples: (Not mine)











http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky...48t8o1_500.jpg

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kx...gfjoo1_500.jpg

[OsmosisStudios]

Which effect? there are several here. And what, particularly, are you referring to in the "effect" or "look"?

[MrBeta]

On two and three, the photo looks as if they metered on the drawing and outside the window, thus making the two photos darker. Other than that, it looks to be several effects.

[BCampbell]

I'm not sure exactly what you're seeing either, but I'm guessing you're going for some kind of soft or "vintage" effect, which is really popular right now, almost the next color reduction or tonemapped HDR.

For a start, try looking at your brightness/contrast settings and increasing brightness while decreasing contrast. This should give you something sort of like the first photo, where it's a bit "hazy".

Also try reducting saturation -- not desaturating completely, just dropping saturation overall, especially by specific channel (dropping saturation on reds and yellows can have especially dramatic effects, as they tend to affect skin tones).

Beyond that you might want to look into cross processing, which cuts right to the heart of it by using curves adjustments.

[wishvam]

sure its vignetting effect i hope if i'm right you can do it by applying lens correction filter in distort in Photoshop cs3..