Muted tones in Photoshop

[timwaters77]

Something increasingly popular in wedding and portrait photography are photo's with muted tones. Below is a blog with some examples.

The Nichols Blog » We’re a husband + wife photo team located in Austin, Texas

do you know how this look is accomplished? I assume its through photoshop and I am new to photoshop. do you all know how to do that? I'd like to experiment some but not sure where to begin.

[GB1]

The colors are muted, but it's more than desaturation I think: looks like selective colors are desaturated more than others, and/or that certain colors are shifted. Can't tell for sure, but it may be an attempt to create an 'old film' look, just not sure which film.

G

[n8]

It looks like a cross processing trick to me. Possibly done through a plugin (I use nik color efex for the same thing) or action judging by the consistency. I would use curves to do it in Photoshop.

[Anbesol]

They aren't very muted, if at all in some of them. The blog shows a variety of technique, most of the color qualities are not processing but how he shot them. The only thing consistent is that he never saturates beyond a normal, natural level. The color often has a very high key, specular quality to it, making it perhaps appear slightly washed out, with specially placed specular clipped highlights, producing a hazy sort of muted effect. Basically, puting all key detail in the shadow compositionally, making it a large shadow area either with reflectors or white card or something, and exposing for the shadow area. This photographer doesn't seem to care much for having any shadows in the image. Personal preference I suppose, I think shadows are often pretty cool.

*edit - Pick one image and we'll dissect that, instead of an entire series, with I think a little more accuracy and detail.

*edit 2 - After looking through more of the portfolio, I think its safe to say that this husband/wife duo avoid shadows like the plague, and intentionally use clipped and ultra-high key light. They are a very good duo, but... I wish they would give fair and equal representation to the dark side.... lol...

[n8]

So you're saying that color came from the shoot, and the effect seems to be more in the lighting?

[Anbesol]

Yeah. Conservative with saturation (as one should be). Not entirely sure what color quality it is the OP is talking about, as the link shows a lot of different images.