mystery - what he did?

[TueSR]

Hello everybody,

I really hope you can help. Quite a while ago, a friend of mine sent me a picture. It had been edited in photoshop, and the result was the picture that should be atteached to this message. it has unfortunately been a while and my friend doesn't know what he did to edit the picture. Only that he used photoshop. If he or I had the original it would perhaps be a bit easier to figure out what was done, but as the original sadly has been lost my hope was that some of you photo editing buffs could help.
Of the original picture there isn't much to say. when you look at it the light fell from the left, creating quiet a bright section on the cheek compared to the rest of the image. some filter and effects must still have been used to make the detail wash out like that and create that kind of contrast between the various parts of the image.

Any sort of guesses as to what effects/filter might have been used will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all for you time and patience

[PamEli]

not sure but my first thought is that he did a gamma adjustment or extreme curves adjustment

[edbayani]

i'm sure the original image was color.
desaturate, to remove color. levels, move the right slider towards center, move left slider towards center till you lose almost all grays. click ok. go to select, color range, click the whites and move the fuzziness to the right. click ok. fill selection with dark gray and adjust gray tones using levels to your liking. deselect. save.