This is an incredibly useful photo effect, best used for portraits with only two or three dominant colors. Have I mentioned lately that Photoshop rocks?
Step 1. After opening the file you want to edit in Photoshop Duplicate the entire image onto another layer. Then, with the top layer selected, go to Enhance> Unsharp Mask and enter the following settings.
This should give your photo a higher contrast, grittier look to it.
Step 2. Select the part of the photo that you want to be the focal point. I chose the eyes. Feather the selection by a radius of 20 pixels, then go to Select> Inverse. The red mask below shows that everything but the eyes are selected (the red tint is the part that is not selected).
Step 3. Decide which colors you want to dominate your photo. In this case the dominant colors are white, orange, and green/blue. The other colors will be desaturated to give a more intense effect to the dominant colors. I chose to desaturate the blue areas other than the eyes, to make the color of the eyes stand out more.
With the inverse of the focal point from Step 2 still selected, go to Enhance> Adjust Color> Hue/Saturation. In the Drop down menu that says "Master" Choose the color channel that you want to desaturate. Since I wanted to get rid of the excess blue tones, I chose the "Blues". Once you've selected the channel you want, drag the Saturation bar back as far as it will go. I did the same with the "Cyans" channel, but you may not need to. If this was done properly, only the blues that are in the selected area should disappear.
This is the image before and after I desaturated my selected area. Check out the difference in the blue tones everywhere but the eyes.
Step 4. Now we need to add a diffusion glow. Deselect everything and duplicate the top layer. Working on the new duplicated layer, go to Filter> Distort> Diffuse Glow and use the following settings: Graininess-2, Glow Amount-4, Clear Amount-15. Click OK.
Step 5. Set the blending mode of the top layer to "Lighten" and the opacity of the layer to 70%. This will combine the two top layers, enhancing all of the highlights in the photo. After that, merge the layers together (Layers>Merge Down).
Step 6. Now we're going to give the photo a dreamy look using a special effect that I call "Pure Softness". This effect uses Photoshop's versatile blur filter make any image as soft and dreamy as you want. It's definitely one of my favorite photo effects and I use it a lot, especially on portraits.
Duplicate the layer and use the selection brush (or whatever tool you want) to select the focal point. Go to Select> Modify> Expand and expand the selection by 50 pixels. Then feather the selection by 150 pixels. Here I use a mask to clearly show you my selection. Remember, the part of the image that has a stronger red tint is the part that is not selected, and the area with the softer tint is the part that is feathered.
Step 7. Go to Select> Inverse, so that the selection now includes everything except for the focal points. Then click on to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and enter a radius of 15 pixels. Now you should have a photo that is a bit blurry everywhere, with the blur becoming less pronounced toward the focal points.
Step 9. Select the middle layer in the Layers Palette and then go to Enhance> Adjust Lighting> Levels. Slide the bars to slightly to lighten some of the shadows. Repeat this on each layer until you're happy with the lighting. Make sure that you aren't adjusting the levels on only one of the layers, as this will cause you to lose part of the photo effect. You may also want to try adjusting to opacity of the layers. Then you can merge them and make your final adjustments to the lighting and colors.
And here is what we come up with!
This is a photograph I shot of my cat and below is an example of how you can take a simple, albeit very cute subject and turn it into an engaging and interesting piece of art, using Adobe Photoshop.
Step 8. Set the blending mode of the top (blurred) layer to Multiply. This will the create the exact opposite of the "Lighten" mode; all of the shadows in the image will be intensified. Repeat the Gaussian Blur once more, this time on the entire image. You'll wind up with pretty, soft, but dark photo.
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