Photoshop skin tone tutorial
Step 1: Let’s begin by opening an image which may be suffering from a glare spots caused by your camera’s flash. (Gee, I wonder who this handsome devil is?). Notice the glare spots in the forehead, on the upper cheeks beside the nose, and also on the tip of the nose.Step 2: The next step is to create a blank layer above your image (background) layer. Name this layer “Painted Layer” or something to that effect. Don’t be turned off by the fact that it looks like we are about to start painting. The effect will come out perfectly for you, even if you aren’t yet a wiz with the paintbrush tool!Step 3: Select the Eydropper tool from your toolbar, and in the eyedropper options at the top of your window, choose a sample size of “5 by 5 Average.” This will take an average colour reading of a 5×5 pixel area which you click on (with the eyedropper tool), rather than sampling the colour of a single pixel.Step 4: We want to use the eyedropper to select some flesh tones for painting with. In this particular image, I decided to use two areas, as indicated by the marked areas (1 and 2) in the image here. Your particular subject may only require one skin tone sampling; it will all depend on how many glare spots there are in your image, and where they are located on your subject.Step 5: Once you have your first sampled colour, select the paintbrush tool and choose a nice soft edged brush. Now paint over the glare area all around the first sampled colour’s glare spots. Completely paint over the glare, leaving none of it behind. Repeat this process for the other colour sample areas, if you have more than one.Now paint over the glare area all around the first sampled colour’s glare spots. Completely paint over the glare, leaving none of it behind. Repeat this process for the other colour sample areas, if you have more than one.Here (bottom-left image) you can see I used the first sampled colour to paint over the forehead almost entirely. Next I sampled some colour with the eyedropper tool at the second location by the cheeks, and painted over the glare in both cheeks and also the nose, using this second colour. The image looks very strange at this point, but we are about to fix that right now!Step 6: This is where the magic really happens. In your layers palette, change the blending mode of the Painted Layer to “Darken.” This blend mode will only allow your painted areas to show through over lighter tones (in this case – the glare) in your image. Reduce the layer opacity to 0% and slowly increase the opacity slider to a point where the hotspots start to dissapear without looking like they’ve been painted. You will find that somewhere between a range of 50% – 70% works best depending on your image. We don’t want to go any higher, because you still need to retain some of the luminosity of the original image.Step 7: Next, create a layer mask (using the “Add a Mask” button at the bottom of the layers palette) on your Painted Layer. Press “D” to revert your swatch colours to their default, black and white. Using a soft paintbrush, you can gently paint with BLACK on your layer mask just around the outside edges of your painted areas, to further soften the transitional edges of your painted areas. This step is optional, as not every image will require extra softening.Step 8: Click on your Background Layer to make it active, and duplicate this layer by pressing Control-J (PC) or Command-(Mac). Click and drag this layer in the layers palette to reposition it on top of the other two layers. Rename this layer “Restore Details.” Lastly, change the blending mode of this layer to “Overlay.”The image looks horrible at this point, but what we are about to do is bring back some of the details and textures which may have been lost in the painted skin tones.Step 9: To bring back some of the texture and detail, we are going to use a sharpening technique which will emphasize the details in the image. With your Restore Details layer active, use the filter: Filter > Other > High Pass…When the High Pass filter dialog box comes up, adjust the radius slider until you see some detail come back into your image. Every photo will require a different radius setting, but you’ll find that somewhere in the range of 1 – 2 pixels will work well. Here I used 1.3 pixels.Step 10: Since we don’t want to restore or emphazise details in the entire image, add a layer mask to this layer while holding down the Alt key (PC) or Option key (Mac). This will create a black layer mask, effectively hiding this layer. Using a soft edged paintbrush, paint with WHITE over the areas in your image where you may need to restore some skin detail. Here I painted on my layer mask over the forehead, cheeks, and nose, bringing back the skin texture to these areas. You can see in the layer mask (shown in the layers palette)where I have painted back the detailed and textured areas in my photograph.There is a dramatic improvement in the image now. The hotspots from the flash are gone, and skin tones still look natural. This is an easy effect to learn, and will save countless photos from going in the recycle bin due to unsightly hotspot glares.
Dan has been writing articles for nearly 4 years. Come visit his latest website
over at harborbreezeceilingfansdeals.info
which helps people find the best kinds of Harbor Breeze Ceiling Fans and information on home renovation appliances and furniture.
