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Getting rid of a red face in Photoshop
I did a group portrait last week. One of the four people had a pretty red face from being out in the sun too long the day before. I played around with an adjustment layer, lowered the red in color balance and used a mask to blend in his face with less redness. But I'm not really happy with the result. Is there a better method to deal with this? Thanks May 25 09 04:18 am Link Seriously Superficial wrote: Did you try saturation instead of or as well as colour balance? And usually the face will be darker, so a levels adjustment too is necessary.This usually works much better in Lab mode, so you could try going to Lab mode, adjusting the saturation and colour balance, then back into RGB. May 25 09 04:24 am Link Did they specifically ask you to change the color of the person's skin? I mean, if the lighting is neutrally balanced, and other people and things in the scene look correct, I wouldn't change the fact that one person looks sunburnt when they were in fact sunburnt unless I was asked to do it. May 25 09 04:25 am Link you need to post the picture. May 25 09 04:27 am Link I too would go for a saturation adjustment layer and to bring out the red(go negative on the red). Another alternative would be to have a b&w adjustment layer and using layer masking, fade the red out of that person's face..A couple of options for you :-) May 25 09 04:27 am Link Many methods, but everyone is different in their favorites. Do you have a link to the image you could post up? would help to see how bad it is in contrast to the others in the pic. If you get stuck pm me and i'll have a look via email for you. May 25 09 04:27 am Link Seriously Superficial wrote: Keep it. If they were red, they were red. You're trying to capture a moment in time. May 25 09 04:32 am Link The OP isn't asking for your opinion on whether the image should be adjusted, it's a technical question about how. Better to assume the decision of why has been resolved. May 25 09 04:39 am Link In a portrait, I will open Levels...select reds from the menu up top, and adjust a bit. If I need to, I'll paint the lips or anything else red back in with the history brush or layer mask. With a group photo, I guess you could select the person and try it. It's hard to tell without seeing it, but....hey! it's an option. Good luck. May 25 09 04:56 am Link re- photography wrote: Yes, they asked. May 25 09 06:10 am Link Thanks for the suggestions so far. I'll try again. May 25 09 06:10 am Link Try the Lee Varis method from "Skin" Open a HSL layer. Choose the red chanel from the drop down using the normal eye dropper, sample from the reddest of the red area. then use the negative dropper and sample a normal colored area of skin to exclude this from the adjustment. Slide the hue slider all the way to the left (-180, I think) so most everything goes blue. The blue areas are the range of red that you selected. Now take the right triangular tonal range slider on the tone scale, and slide it to the left to fine tune what range of red you want to adjust. You'll see the blue areas starting to shrink. Now go back to the hue slider and bring it back right of center (usually between +5 and +12 should due). This adjusts the reds that you've just selected, adding a little more yellow. Bring the lightness slider up a tiny bit to taste. Then go back and mask for the areas you want to adjust, making sure to keep the lips and such masked out. This is a rough method, but works fairly well for images that in all likelihood won't be viewed extremely large (as in a shot with 4 people in it...) May 25 09 06:21 am Link - Make a duplicate layer - Desaturate the top layer - Being concerned only with the people with red faces, reduce the opacity until it looks good to you - Erase everything else except the faces on the people you are concerned with May 25 09 06:29 am Link i get images from a client with red spill on faces from a red tent and use nik's viveza plug-in (great for those of us who aren't patient with the brush tool): http://www.niksoftware.com/viveza/usa/entry.php i'll also use curves or levels and work on the red channel. May 25 09 07:03 am Link re- photography wrote: I agree! If they ask, then yes change it, but otherwise I would keep it. They did know about their photo shoot? Did they not? May 25 09 07:49 am Link Hm make it black and white...... lol May 25 09 07:52 am Link MEK Photography wrote: I prefer this method....or one very similar. It works surprisingly well and is fairly quick to do. May 25 09 07:54 am Link Slight desaturation, otherwise too much desaturation from the red might look unnatural. I agree with making it B/W May 25 09 07:56 am Link My preferred method, FWIW, is to use a selective color adjustment layer... Second is a curve in CMYK mode... May 25 09 07:58 am Link Evocative Images wrote: It's a forum; I'll give my opinion whether it's asked or not! May 25 09 08:28 am Link Photography by J wrote: My most common approach for sunburn or over-exertion redness is Selective Color, and remove Magenta from the Reds. It often fixes the problem without having a visible impact on the rest of the image--meaning it doesn't need to be masked. That makes it suitable for batch processing of picnic photos. May 25 09 09:28 am Link Moderator Warning!
Drew Hoshkiw wrote: It's a forum which has specific rules as well. Perhaps it would be useful to review them. May 25 09 09:33 am Link Kevin_Connery wrote: hmmm... I'll have to try that... May 25 09 09:34 am Link Ditto on the selective color adjustment. I use this quite a bit for hands that appear redder than the rest of the subject's skin. Often I can just make a quick selection of the area to be adjusted, use a slight feathering (maybe 3 to 30 pixels depending on the image size and relative size of the area being worked on), and then use selective color lowering magenta from the reds. Sometimes I will make further, minor adjustments to cyan, yellow and/or black until the area is acceptable. Very quick and effective. May 25 09 09:49 am Link selective color is a good choice, if the red is more pink try reducing the magenta as opposed to the red in selective color. Also don't be afraid to add yellow to reduce red. May 25 09 12:18 pm Link |