Trendy Desaturated Portrait Look

This is just about the hottest Photoshop portrait technique out there right now, and you see it popping up everywhere, from covers of magazines to CD covers, from print ads to Hollywood movie posters, and from editorial images to billboards. It seems right now everybody wants this effect (and you’re about to be able to deliver it in roughly 60 seconds flat using the simplified method shown here!).

Step One:

Open the photo you want to apply this trendy desaturated portrait effect to. Duplicate the Background layer by pressing Ctrl-J (Mac: Command-J). Then duplicate this layer using the same shortcut (so you have three layers in all, which all look the same, as shown here).

SCOTT KELBY

Step Two:

In the Layers palette, click on the middle layer (Layer 1) to make it the active layer, then press Ctrl-Shift-U (Mac: Command-Shift-U) to desaturate and remove all the color from that layer. Of course, there’s still a color photo on the top of the layer stack, so you won’t see anything change onscreen (you’ll still see your color photo), but if you look in the Layers palette, you’ll see the thumbnail for the center layer is in black and white (as seen here).