PS guru wtd - retouching technique for a particular look

<p>Any Photoshop gurus retouchers out there that could help give direction?<br>

<br />I want to create this kind of 'vintage' look with these skin tones <br /><a href="http://www.billyundhells.de/Seiten/Pictures.html" target="_blank">http://www.billyundhells.de/Seiten/Pictures.html</a><br /><br /> I have been experimenting with a black & white duplicate image, on a layer above the color background, and then playing with the opacity and blend modes.<br />It achieves a desaturated image but ....<br /><br />I understand that a gradient adjustment layer may be a better option than a b&w layer?.<br /> I don't have experience creating those and was wondering if there was a way to set up the gradient, and placing the stops, and assigning the right kind of colors to the stops, that would get me to where I want to go?<br /><br />The usual adj. layers don't seem to 'get me there' col/tone wise.<br />Another layer to 'crush' the blacks or create a hard black edge also seems necessary - this is more accessible through a variety of adj. layers<br /><br />I d/l a few samples from the web link above, and used the col picker tool to read the CMYK values of the skin in the info palette, I find that they're all about equal or around 36, 36, 36 (maybe with a touch of extra red) and the k is around 1 or 2 . So then I wondered how to recreate this and I created a col fill layer with those cmyk values. I laid this col fill layer over an image (of mine) and set the blend mode to Saturation. Still it doesn't quite get me there<br /><br />Any advice appreciated.<br />Frank</p>

<p>Is this effect called "draganizing"? If so, I thought there were a number of PS plug-ins to quickly achieve these type results. I don't work with this effect so beyond my first sentence, I'm at a loss. I think there have been several posts in PN on how to best create the effect.</p>

<p>The effect looks similar to the <a href="http://lightroomkillertips.com/2012/lightroom-4-presets-the-300-look-updated/">"300" preset</a> for Lightroom on Matt Kloskowski's <a href="http://lightroomkillertips.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a>. I tried that preset recently, desaturating it even further and shifting the hues. The result is pretty close to the photos on the site you linked to. Your results will depend on the lighting - I can see from the Billy und Hells site some photos began with fairly high contrast from studio flash, while others appear to have started with lower contrast or diffused lighting.</p>

<p>Any ideas about the contents of the LR pre-set you refer to ? I am working in PS (cs6) rather than LR</p>

<p>All of those shots are underexposed in camera, which probably goes a long way to creating the look.</p>