While playing around with inversions and trying to figure out how to make colors pop, I stumbled across a nice way to achieve the opposite effect: making colors subdued and washed out. The nice thing about this effect is that it doesn’t also wash out your shadows, only the color is affected (unless you use some special blend modes).

Before	After	Second Pass

Here is the action I created if you’d like to download it and save some effort. Otherwise, here are the steps to do it yourself:

1. Open a copy of the picture you want to apply the effect to
   
2. Duplicate the background layer (Layer->Duplicate Layer) and name it Inverted
3. Select Inverted and choose Image->Adjustments->Invert
   
4. Change the Blending Mode for Inverted to Luminosity
   
   
5. Duplicate the background layer again and name it To Merge
6. Select Inverted and choose Layer->Merge Down
7. Select To Merge and choose Image->Adjustments->Invert
   
8. Change the Blending Mode on To Merge to Soft Light
   
9. Duplicate the background layer again and name it Subdued Color
10. Select To Merge and merge down

You should now have an image that looks somewhat like a black and white photo that’s been strongly hand-tinted. I didn’t find too many interesting blending variations with this one, but there’s no reason you can’t play with it more than I did and come up with some! I did try running it again using my Subdued Color layer as the base (rename Background to Background 1 and Subdued Color to Background before you try again!) which resulted in even more of a hand-tinted effect.

Enjoy!