How can I create a washed-out portrait look while keeping blacks deep?
Asked 8/25/2012
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I’m trying to recreate a portrait style where the overall image looks faded or washed out, but the dark areas still feel strong rather than muddy. The examples also seem to have a cool blue tint. Starting from a well-lit portrait, what kind of editing would produce this look?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
7
I can't imagine why you would want to do that, but it just looks like a bluish bias level was added to everything. Note that the blacks are NOT black. It looks like in this case about (0, .18, .34) was added to the black level.
Here is the original central area of your first picture:

I found the darkest area and subtracted off the black level:

The blacks are now black, and as you can see the remaining colors look plausible considering someone greatly cranked up the contrast originally, probably in part to compensate for the blue wash.
Some of the detail in the dark areas can be made more apparent with a non-linear brightening:

Unfortunately this is now amplifying small differences in the darkest area of the original, so we are getting some noise and color fringing. A little bit of a greenish cast appears, particularly in the dark areas. Some of this is due to working with the limited color resolution of the original where much information was already lost.
In any case, since I was able to reverse most of the process, it should be pretty clear that the effect was mostly fudging the black level to be bluish.
Originally by user7603. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user7603
13y ago
0
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This look is mainly a color-grade rather than a lighting trick. Based on the examples, the “washed out” feel comes from lifting the black level slightly and adding a cool blue/cyan bias to the shadows and overall image. The blacks in the examples are not truly neutral black—they’re tinted.
A practical way to get close:
- Start with a well-exposed portrait.
- Raise the black point a little so shadows fade instead of going pure black.
- Add a blue/cyan tint, especially into the shadows.
- Increase contrast to keep the image from looking flat.
- Fine-tune with a tone curve so darker tones still feel rich even though they’re lifted.
If you push this too far, shadow noise and color fringing can become more visible, so cleaner files help. In short: it’s a combination of lifted/tinted blacks, cool color grading, and enough contrast to preserve depth.
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