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I have tried blending, curves and all I can imagine so maybe I probably just need a good photoshop course.

I have managed to reach certain aspect of this but there's always something missing.

This type of visual is what I'm looking for on my artwork and I'm desperate to know how to achieve it.

If you guys could help me out with some tips on how to achieve this, or something similar, I will truly appreciate it.

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    Wait for proper daylight settings before taking the photo. This isn't tweaked or altered that much in software. it's 80-90% done in the camera.
    – Scott
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 0:58
  • What, exactly, a bout the tones are you aiming to achieve? As Scott states, photography is mostly about the photograph that you start with. This photo appears to have been shot during the golden hour which likely heavily contributed to the tones: google.com/search?q=golden+hour
    – DA01
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 1:08
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    Most of the "effect" here comes from shooting high-speed (400 or 800 ISO) film in a toy camera (Holga, Diana, or similar), somewhat underexposed (not that there's a lot of choice, given a single shutter speed and maybe two aperture values on a higher-end model). Colloquially, you can call if "Lomography" (but that's actually a brand name). You can fake the softness, field curvature, grain, vignetting and light leaks individually once you spot them for what they are - or you can use a plugin like Topaz Lens Effects that has canned versions.
    – Stan Rogers
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 1:37
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    @StanRogers Why not put that as an answer. That's actually giving good explanations and logical options! You're not telling the whole how-to but enough good clues to get the OP on the right track. Plus your answers are interesting and smart.
    – go-junta
    Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 5:48

1 Answer 1

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There's a few things going on in your example. A bit of noise, high contrast, few highlights, and the skin seems to have a bit of red to it. I'll see how close I can get for you just using a jpg. Using a RAW file would of course be ideal. Using this photo by Alexander Shustov courtesy Unsplash

To start I'm going to pull down the midtones but in this image I lost a bit of detail from her hair so I brought back in some shadows on the curve:

enter image description here

Then I pushed a little bit of red into it. Slightly more in the shadows than the highlights

enter image description here

Then I create a solid Gray adjustment layer and rename it Noise then use the Add Noise Filter set to Monochromatic and adjust the settings to taste. Since we're using a Smart Object Filter we can always change this later.

enter image description here

Change blending mode to Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light or Linear Light and then lower the opacity. I kinda like Linear Light with Opacity 10 for this:

enter image description here

This is pretty much done. I think we've got a bit too much blue in it so I added another curve to get rid of it. And cause the sky was kinda plain the image I was using I added a little color to it too. Could probably replace the sky entirely easily enough in this one but I don't feel like it. Final result with layer panel:

enter image description here

Final Before and After:

enter image description here

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