1. Boost contrast Open up dragan_start.dng (download from the link above) in Photoshop Elements.

Were going to start by improving overall contrast in Adobe Camera Raw, to make the most of the shots rim light effect. Push the Contrast slider all the way up to +100. This will make the image look too dark, but we can compensate for this by pushing Exposure up to 1.20. It doesnt matter if we clip the highlights a little.

2. Emphasise texture Now we can employ a trick to reveal a bit more texture and colour. Drag the Fill Light slider right to 100. This pumps a bit too much light into the shots shadows and weakens them a bit, so to compensate for this, drag the Blacks slider right to 17. This sets us up nicely to apply our main effect.

3. Reveal detail In the Depth drop-down menu at the bottom, change 16-bit to 8-bit, as we want to be able to use layers, which arent an option in 16-bit mode in Elements. Click on Open Image and then duplicate your background layer by pressing Ctrl+J. Now go to Enhance>AdjustLighting>Shadows/Highlights. Set Shadows and Highlights to 30% and leave Midtones.

4. Tweak the tones Click OK, then create a Levels adjustment layer by clicking the half-moon icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Select Levels from the menu. Drag the black, grey and white sliders beneath the graph to 55, 1.00 and 200. This clips the shadows and highlights and increases saturation. Press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E to create a new layer, merging all of the existing layers.

5. Invert and blur Double-click on the text Layer 2 to rename it Dragan1, then go to Enhance>AdjustColour>RemoveColour. Next, create a duplicate of this layer by pressing Ctrl+J, then rename this layer Dragan2. Press Ctrl+I to invert the Dragan2 layer and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and select a Radius of 10. Click OK.

6. Blend these layers Change the blending mode of the Dragan2 layer by clicking on Normal at the top of the Layers palette and selecting Overlay from the drop-down menu. The inverted look will vanish and detail will be sharpened. Use the Opacity slider at the top of the Layers palette to

control the strength of the overall effect. We dragged Dragan1 to 50% to restore some colour, and Dragan2 to 30% to tone down the detail.

7. Adjust Levels Add a new Levels adjustment layer. This time set the Input sliders to 25, 1.00 and 230 respectively. This boosts contrast further, and increases colour saturation, too. The highlights are clipped a little too much now, though, so grab a large black brush set to 100% opacity, select the new layers mask thumbnail and brush detail back into the rim areas of the face.

8. Crop to suit Well crop the image as there is lots of black space either side. Press C for the Crop tool, click-and-drag to draw your crop and then click the tick button to complete it. The Dragan effect has revealed a few sensor spots so well need to create a new layer to remove them by pressing Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E.

9. Remove any specks Select the Spot Healing Brush (J) and Sample All Layers is checked in the the top. Adjust the brush size using the carefully click on all the specks on the background to remove them. Finally, clone out some of the rough edges that effect has created.

make sure Options bar at [ and ] keys and black were going to the Dragan

10. Clone out blocky edges Around the ear and nape of the neck youll notice some nasty, blocky fringing. We can remove this with the Clone Stamp Tool. Press S to access the tool and make sure Sample All Layers and Aligned are selected in the Options bar. Alt-click to sample the background and carefully brush away at the edges using a small, hardedged brush. Enjoyed this? Watch the accompanying video to be walked through the steps.

Read more: http://www.photoradar.com/techniques/technique/dragan-effect-photoshoptutorial#ixzz15EH9ygl3