Matte for the Win

I have discovered a new app on my iPhone recently that has quickly become my favorite. It's called Vscocam and many of its filters create that beautiful matte appearance that I find so pleasing to the eye. I can't get enough of it! Here is an iPhone example, and the beautiful subjects happen to be my daughter and her boyfriend. :)

I began wondering how to achieve this matte appearance with my photos in PSE, and a little Google research gave me a quick way to replicate the look. The effect isn't quite as extreme as that of Vscocam, but it's close enough that I'll take it! It's super easy, too. All you have to do is create a new Levels layer in PSE, and then move the black output levels pointer to the RIGHT until you're happy with the matte appearance. It's also important that your image already contain some good contrast before you take this step. I've included a screen shot of my PSE levels panel at the bottom of this post so you can see what I'm talking about - in my example, I have moved the black pointer to the right from 0 to 54.

I'm so happy to have learned this new trick and I'm sharing some more of my recent photos using this matte effect, including an image of a fallen butterfly. I felt sad taking photos of this dying insect, but its wings were so gorgeous that I had to capture their beauty...