I was always the photographer that tisk-tisked Photoshop. Set it up right, get the lights right, don't need that stuff. Well I went off to Imaging USA for the first time this year, and watched and talked to people, and realized I was wrong. It is a NEEDED skill, and even small tweaks can make a world of difference.
So one of the first things I actually sat down and learned, was taking care of red/blotchy skin. Because I needed a shot of myself, and when I looked at it, that's what I saw, blotchy red skin.
Here is the original from the camera:
I download all my stuff into Lightroom. So for me, I can go to Photo > Edit in Photoshop and bring the image in there.
Once that loaded, go to the adjustments tab and add a Hue/Saturation layer (the icon is highlighted yellow)
You will get the layer added in your layers panel, and a tool box for that layer as seen below.
First thing to do is set 'Custom' and 'Reds', since that's what we want to get rid of. This will turn on the dropper icons at the bottom of the control.
Select the dropper on the left, and go into your image and click on a red/blotchy area. This will adjust the range in the temperature bar at the bottom.
Now you want to go back up to the Hue slider at the top and grab it and run it all the way to the left. This is going to show you what parts of the images will be adjusted. Odds are you didn't hit just the right pixel, and you will get a nice alien looking image like this:
That's ok. What you want to do is grab the middle part of the temperature slider and start moving it around a little while watching the image. What you are looking for is a return of skin color, except for the blotchy parts that you are going to adjust in just a bit. So you get something like this:
This shows you what will be adjusted on the image. To adjust it, grab the Hue slider and run it back to zero then start slowly moving it to the right. Watch the image and when you see the blotchy skin fade and look good, you are where you need to be.
The problem is, the lips have a red component to them, so they are going to lose that and not look natural. You can fix this.
In the layers panel, on the adjustment layer you are working on, select the white box, that's the mask part of the layer.
Now what you are going to do is 'paint' black over the lips, which gets rid of the adjustment wherever you paint black. If you go to far, you can undo, or switch to painting white, which will return the Hue/Saturation adjustment to the parts painted white.
So grab the paintbrush and adjust it to the size and brush you need. Use D to reset the fore/background colors to black and white. Use X if needed to swap them so black is the foreground color.
Now simply head over the the lips and 'paint' over them. The color returns.
Thanks for checking this little tip out. I plan to continue to add more as I work my way through learning and becoming proficient at Photoshop.
