Dreamy

There is a certain processing style that I've been trying to achieve for a while now.  Then today it just made sense and I give you this:

It's washed out and hazy.  It works well on portraits and photos of objects.  It has a dreamy feel about it and it manages to keep a good bit of saturation while being toned down.  You could even use it on a photo of your kid with spaghetti stains on his face!  I like it lots.  You can manage this whole thing in PSE without using any plugins or actions (woo hoo!)

First open your photo in your editor.



This might make it easier, it might make it more confusing, but I've saved the swatches of the colors that I'm using here and you can download the .ACO file HERE.
*After you download it, open Preset Manager in PSE.  Choose swatches from the drop down menu.  Click load and find the .ACO file and they will show up in your swatches palette.  You can toggle the swatches palette on in the windows menu.

Make two color fill layers. And set them like this
1. 9bae9e, soft light, 100%
2. 080638, exclusion, 100%

Now create a levels adjustment layer, choose blue from the drop down menu and change the output levels to 55 and 225.

This part is optional, but if you want at this point you could do a hue/saturation adjustment layer and either bump up the saturation or bring it down a bit.



Create brightness/contrast adjustment layer and raise the contrast to 50

Then create a third color fill layer of #f4ecd6 and set the blend mode to soft light.

This will create a very washed out photo.  You will most likely want some contrast brought back in.  Duplicate the background layer and bring that to the very top.  Set the blend mode to soft light and bring the opacity down to about 50.

Your layers should look something like this: