PS ? - How to desaturate photos?

mountainhouse

I'm not sure I've got the right word for it. I'd search for it if I knew. Can you help with what it's called, or, better yet, how to produce it?

Link to example

jfriend

mountainhouse wrote:

I'm not sure I've got the right word for it. I'd search for it if I knew. Can you help with what it's called, or, better yet, how to produce it?

Link to example

Desaturate means to take color out. Fully desturated would be turning a color image into black and white. Partially desaturated would just take some of the color out.

Selectively desaturated would take all the color out of some of the photo, leaving other parts with color. I can't tell from the image you linked to which of these you are trying to do.

mountainhouse

To my untrained eye, the image looks somewhat desaturated - looks as though it's moved part of the way to black and white. Trying to get similar results. Thanks!

jfriend

mountainhouse wrote:

To my untrained eye, the image looks somewhat desaturated - looks as though it's moved part of the way to black and white. Trying to get similar results. Thanks!

Easy. In PS, go to the menus and do Layer / New Adjustment Layer / Hue Saturation. Then just turn down the saturation slider until you like it.

mountainhouse

Perfect. And your earlier clarification allows me to search a little better, and, of course, finding lots of stuff. Tnx!

pyrtek

There's no way that the posted example was done by simply reducing the
saturation in a Hue/Sat layer. It looks like it's a blending of a B&W version
of the image with the original color image with the B&W layer's blending mode
set to something like Overlay or Soft Light. Of course there were probably other
things done to it, as well.

Isn't the author of that photo an active DGrin member? Perhaps you could simply
ask her how she did it?

BinaryFx

jfriend wrote:

Easy. In PS, go to the menus and do Layer / New Adjustment Layer / Hue Saturation. Then just turn down the saturation slider until you like it.

The Hue/Saturation command is a little strange, by default in normal blend mode changing saturation and or hue will also affect the tonality of the image (RGB lumonosity or Lab Lightness readings). One may think that just because they adjusted the H/S command saturation slider and not the lightness slider that the tonality would not be affected...but it is.

One must set the adjustment layer or fade command to "color" blend mode so that the desaturation does not affect the original luminosity of the image (which reduces posterization and avoids other problems).

More here:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/howto_safesaturation.html


Sincerely,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

urbanaries

Hello,

The linked image was manipulated entirely in Lightroom. Blacks raised and fill light applied, highlights dropped, vibrance increased but with hefty desaturation to entire image...about -70%, I think. Hope this helps!

Lynne