How to create Chalk / powder like picture?

It might help if you showed some examples of the kind of picture you want to achieve.

But if you want a nice, blurred background, keep your aperture wide open. Most people use lenses with an f1.8 aperture, like the 50mm or 35mm, because it gives sharp focus with a soft, creamy background.

 

Or do you mean low contrast and muted colours? If so, you can reduce the contrast in curves (or use the Brightness/Contrast thingy. You will probably need to increase the brightness as well as decrease the contrast), use the Saturation thingy to decrease the intensity of the colours and perhaps add some Gaussian blur to get the soft focus effect.

But, yes, an example of what you mean would help. I'm whistling in the dark a bit here.

 

You could link to a photo that looks like what you want. I could also have a go at tweaking one of my old photos using the procedures I described above and see if that is close to what you want.

 

OK. I have had a go using a different method than the brightness/contrast one.

Starting photo. High key lighting (so, strong diffused light from ideally more than one direction. This one had only one light and could have done with another). Light background (this was a transluscent shower curtain illuminated from behind, but you could use a white background lit with its own light).



Make a duplicate layer and set it to screen mode.



This looks a bit too washed out to my eye, so there are two solutions. Either decrease the opacity of the duplicate layer to bring back a bit of the contrast. I set this to 66%.



Or, create an adjustment layer (option "Levels") and adjust the histogram by pulling in the highlight and shadow sliders slightly.



This final one was done with the Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast slider. Brightness set to +30 and contrast set to -10.



Any use?

 

That's High-Key Lighting (as MMM has said) with alot of post-capture tweaking in software. It's delightful and beautiful and definitely worth learning. Why don't you challenge yourself and share your results here? You need to start with a white card background and a minimum of two lights.


MMM, I'm wowed by your adjustments on that image. Have you considered becoming a PhotoShop Tech when you grow up?

 

I am WAY too old to change career now! And I think Photoshop is a skill that all photographers should learn, rather than sending it to a technician to tamper with (I wasn't even aware that such things existed). Photoshop is the dark room for digital photographers. Just as film photographers fine tune and adjust their work in the darkroom, Photoshop does the same for digital photography, and more. It extends what can be done to turn the process of producing an image into a combination of photography and digital painting. Sending your work to someone else to play with is like sending your film photographs to the chemists to be processed. No, no. Personally, I prefer post processing in Photoshop than a darkroom. Once you have overcome the terror of the software, it is wonderful. And I only know how to use a tiny fraction of it.

 

In addition what the others said try fill layers in different modes. "Hard light" for example does a great job in making the picture more pastel-coloured. Or you can lighten and tint the shadows with "lighten". And stuff like that. Hope that helps.

 

Using a white or light blue colour fill could help too!

 

I usually go with the gradiant tool .. choose a color usually blue, pink, or yellow. Then fill a layer with the color above the picture's layer. Then I adjust the gradiant layer to any of the settings.. u will need to experiment with that.

 

Such a pretty doll! ;w;