How was this absolutely stunning colors achieved?

As someone fairly new to color grading and processing, I would like to know if anyone could provide insight as to how these colors/ this type of visual style is achieved? I've seen many pictures like it, but this is just a good example of what I mean. Photo was taken from a mexican photography website.

http://www.sanjosefilm​makers.com …exico-photographer.17.jpg

Here's another example

http://www.sanjosefilm​makers.com …exico-photographer.32.jpg

This is the photo ill be trying to edit. It's a picture I took about 2 months ago

http://www.flickr.com …/49520014@N02/6​950717196/

I tried desaturating the image and making a low opacity gradient...No luck at all. It just looks washed out. I know I'm missing something here.

Kevin Stiller wrote in post #14508037
I tried desaturating the image and making a low opacity gradient...No luck at all. It just looks washed out. I know I'm missing something here.

Here is a tip ...
Seperate foreground from background in 2 layers.
Process both differently and re assemble the images into one photo.
For example - reduce vibrance in sky and increase saturation in forground.

thanks for the help guys, but im not quite seeing the results I want...:/

how is this...i'm still new to lightroom...was playing around with it...hope i got it something what you were wanting

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Still not what I want... sorry. If you observe the picture, the quality is still reserved throughout the grading process, whereas your picture looks like it has lost a lot of detail and doesn't look like the colors match

Here's my attempt. Not sure if it's close to what you are hoping to do.

IMAGE IS A REDIRECT OR MISSING! HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

In ACR or Lightroom, try increasing contrast, decrrease saturation in the reds, push up the black point, then move your white balance around. See how you do. I'm not on my machine or I'd go be specific.

At base what you're looking at is not that complex.

Sorry man i tried...still new to this stuff...i thought it looked good tho

Note: Certain terms used in my post refers to tools in Lightroom. For reference, I use LR 3.4. Never do I say that I am entirely sure of what this photographer did--I am just calling things as I see them.

The first one looks like it had a Tone Curve manipulation so it pops a little more. The blues in the sky look subdued--looks like he (or she) used the Camera Neutral profile in Camera Calibration, upped the Temperature a bit, and dropped the Blue Luminance a knotch or two.
Some portions of the clouds are blown while the rock that the bride is standing on seems pretty dark so I suspect that a fair amount of Contrast was added but it is hard to say for certain. It seems that some Sharpening was added too to help the textures on the rock and the dress pop.
Gradient filters might have been used to brighten and/or darken portions of the sky but it is hard to say for certain.

The second example that the OP provided looks more flat compared to the first one--almost as if the tone curve was left linear. Again, it looks like he (or she) used the Camera Neutral profile in Camera Calibration and also upped the Temperature a bit (the blue in the sky looks subdued but differently than the first photo).
It looks like some brownish sort of filter was placed over the image but I can't say for certain since I don't use the Photoshop CS3 (or any of the CS series) regularly. The brownish colour may be the byproduct of increasing Temperature as well but I believe that additional work in a Photoshop CS program was done to the image.

OP are you in Lightroom or Photoshop CS?

Well, I'm not sure, but here's my try...

IMAGE IS A REDIRECT OR MISSING! HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/png' | Byte size: ZERO

Mostly desaturation and color tone changes.

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