Not sure what "washed out" means...could mean a lot of different things, like the one I did of my wife.

In this one, I made sure the photo was over exposed (but not too much) and then worked on contrast and saturation till I got what I wanted. If you have a photo done with a "normal" exposure, you should be able to do something similar.

Of course, as I said, not sure what you meant by washed out.