Help needed ... special effect

[deveel]

Hi all,
I hope this is the right place for this post. Once in a while I'm doing portait and model kind of images. A while ago I found a tutorial on some special effect which I liked pretty much. It gives the image some kind of soft aged look, and porcelaine shine. I will attach an example where - for privacy reasons - I removed a part of the image. The example isn't big so I hope you know what effect I mean. Okay, the point is, I cannot reconstruct what I did at that time and I lost the pointer to that specific tutorial. I just remember that it worked soleley with layers and adjustment layers, no selections at all (so the leaves on the water are not selectively treated). Does any of you Photoshop experts have some hints how to achieve this effect? Sorry for not having a better example but all the other images that I did in this way are faces so I better not post them here without approval.

Here's the example (left the original)

 

[Digital Matt]

The picture is too small for me to see any kind of softening effect. It just looks like you changed the color balance. You'll have to post a larger example.

A quick easy softening technique is to duplicate your background layer, run a gaussian blur at 6 pixels, then set the layer opacity to around 50%, to your taste.

 

[photong]

The colour looks like it was desaturated too.

 

[loki.esk]

Something similar I used is, first I run a channel mixer (activation of the monochrome option), the I duplicate the background layer and I move it on the top of the layers. and then I change the blending option to soft light, you can continue doing changes to the photo to reach a better looking. Of course you have many other ways to realize this effects.