With movie film, there's a process called bleaching. It's used to desaturate the colors, but it also boosts the black and white and silver of the image. It's used to create cold or dramatic effects, and is sometimes tinted to increase the effect. I'd like to try to get this effect in Photoshop. In film, this is done by actually bleaching the film during processing. I've tried desaturating, but it doesn't look right. I've also tried placing a grayscaled version of the image under the color image and fading the opacity of the color image, but it still doesn't look like what I'm looking for. And I have no idea how to get the silvering effect. Any ideas?

perhaps add multiple layers each with different tones of grey and then desaturate until you get that look you lookign for. Work with multiple colors and opacities, you may find the look your searching for. Just a thought.

Could you maybe post a before and after of a film version of what you're talking about? The terms make no sense to me, but I'm pretty good at guessing or discovering new Photoshop techniques if I see a before and after shot.

well, I don't have any way to do screenshots, but bleaching is used in a LOT of movies. FEAR DOT COM used it extensively, DREAMCATCHER used it a bit. It makes the picture look almost monotone at times, though it's in color. I can get the bleached out color, I just can't seem to boost the blacks and whites to the right level, and I have no idea how to get the silvery, monotone effect.

Still not sure what look you're going for, but if you want to make your blacks blacker and your whites whiter, use the Levels feature by bringing the outer triangles closer to the middle triangle. Or use the Curves feature by making an S-curve to increase the contrast between highlight and shadow. To get a really good grayscale, I'd suggest using the Lightness channel in the LAB color mode. FWIW, I hope that helps.

I think that bleaching has more effect on the lighter parts than on the darker parts. Like in Minority Report, where everything gets a kind of blueish tint, bleak, but still wit strong shadows and contrasts. These days it is all done digitally and that should be easily replicated in PS. In this example I first dit an automatic level correction and then only moved the middle triangle of the Adjustment Layer to the left. To blow out the middle part of the spectrum. The whites are easily blown out too much, creating 'holes' in the image. After that I stacked a color/saturation AL, where I decreased the saturation to -75 and moved the color slider towards a little greenish tint. On top of that another levels AL to give the dark parts a bit of an extra kick in their behinds. As you see, I put an extra copy of Layer 0 on Layer 0, blurred it 10 pts Gaussian and tried some layer blend modes and opacities, to get the light colors to glow a little. As I haven't seen Fear Dot Com, nor Dreamcatcher I don't know if this look approximates what you mean aprilgem, but I think with these layers you can try for yourself if something suits you. The adjustment layers are great for this, because you can toggle them on and off and even try different layer blends with them. Try to set the Levels AL on 'lighten', who can predict what happens?

Well, I may be misunderstanding you but your description made me think of a technique I heard of a while back on how to make something look more metallic (that was part of it anyway). It was all done with curves and I believe it was starting from grayscale images but it would seem to me that a desaturated image isn't all that far away from a grayscale anyway. Above is a before and after. All that was done was the adjustments shown. Curves (to flatten out the midtones (desaturate) and add a little metalic feel to it and then Levels to boost the whites and blacks. If that was not what you meant or if this approach doesn't get you any closer, my apologies. If nothing else, it's something else to play with.

That's not bad actually. With a black and white image underneath it with the blacks and whites boosted, it might work.

I am not a veteran photoshop user but I think if you research how to use calculations and blend channel info you have greater control over boosting your tones in your final image. My source for this thinking comes from a book entitled Photoshop Channel Chops by David Biedny, Bert Monroy, and Nathan Moody. New Riders publishing 1998.