okies im goin to try and explain in a different way what im looking for ....i seen a pic the other day on flickr with what looked to be a realistic pic but it was 2d come to find out...i posted numverous times on here and also the poser site..which the people in poser are telling me it is indeed a photoshop pic that has been manipulated to look lifelike ...so my question to you is what process if any in photoshop is being used to create this ..so maybe if i have the right word i can look it up in google...and do you think there might be action software that would enable this type of pic http://www.flickr.com/photos/20504983@N04/3091156895/                i now know that vargas is referred to the pose ..and not a process you do in photoshop                                                 

Well, the things which occur to me are these. Firstly, I can't see any way in which you could take just any photo of a model under any kind of lighting conditions and transform it into an image which looks like that. To get an image of that kind, you would have to either photograph the live model in the correct lighting conditions, probably against a white backdrop, or in a 3D app, render a 3D model against the right background in the correct sort of light.

The lighting looks to be very soft and even global illumination - there is very little in the way of shadows - so your image would have to be created, either photographically or in 3D, in that sort of lighting to get a good starting point.

Once the lighting is done, you can take the photo or rendered image and process it in PS to enhance the effect. It would probably mean playing with levels, curves, and layer blending to get it looking like that. There might be a plugin which could give a good result with few clicks - maybe try the demo of Mystical Lighting from AutoFX (http://www.autofx.com/). But frankly I don't think you need a plugin if the original image is correctly lit and if it isn't I don't think any plugin could convert it to that style.

yeah but the lady who did that said she used a photoshop action..and also said thats a 2d avatar pic from a second life character...i asked people in the poser forum and they told me its done in photoshop

And I 'm sure it was done by using PS, but not if the lighting wasn't correct to start with. I'd love to be proved wrong on this if anyone else can show how it's done. Why not go back to the image maker and ask her precisely what she did to get that effect and in particular what did the source image look like before she processed it?

The other thing is that the Second Life characters I've seen hardly look human let alone like the image you linked to. That's either a photo of a live model (my guess) or a very good 3D model rendered very well.

Attached Link: http://www.planetphotoshop.com/pin-up-effect.html

J:woot:e

Vargas - Playboy - airbrush; Oh Strawberrys on Thursday! What was my point ??? Oh yeah Vargas was painting that stuff well before Photoshop or anything similar was anything more than a twinkle in someone's eye.
As I always tell my Katrina when she gets too annoying - There's more than one way to skin a cat.   
Perhaps some sort of solarization process would create that effect ???

The only real way to tell would be to see the original image.

Do you have an image in mind, that you want to work on?

If your talking just about the pic with the girl on her back here's a way to get something like it.

Copy the background layer.

Go to Filter - Noise - Reduce Noise..this will make the skin very smooth.You will have to tweak the adjustment to suit

Get a soft edge brush and with the eraser tool set the opacity low and go over the face and hair so there is still detail there.

Create a new layer and set the blend to Colour.

Get the colour sampler tool and select a skin tone.

Get the brush tool and set the opacity low and start to paint onto the girl...do a few bits then set the foreground colour to white.

Again brush onto the girl..say legs etc and you will start to get the bright smooth highlight.

keep changing from the pink skin tone to white and playing with the brush..it takes time and patience but you will start to get the result.

As the background of the image was white they may have set the foreground and background colour to white and then went to

Filter - Distort - Diffuse Glow..this also smoothes things out but you need to play with it to get the right effect.

I can show you a few samples of something similar if you wish.

Eddie