Red Face

[tccoble]

My grandson has very fair skin so of course just before his prom he got a little too much sun. Do any of you have or know of a good technique to use in photoshop to tone down the red.
Thanks

[Chas]

It's not too fast, but you can work it one of two ways, I ran a color sample off the pinkest part of the sun burn @ 33% then used the magic wand tool to select as much of the redest colors, then I applied a sepia color filter to a new layer @ 74%. after cleaning up areas that I didn't want to sepia. I flattened the image.

[Electricseashell]

Chas I see a red X and ouch that looks like it hurts... sorry I can't help ESS

[Stecyk]

How does this look?



I just played with the hue/saturation layer. The trick is to: a) use red dropdown, b) select overly red skin with left eyedropper, and c) select good skin (the girl's skin) with the minus eyedropper. Then shift hue to the right past zero. You might wish to adjust yellows as well.

This process is outlined in more detail in the following book:

Amazon.com: Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies: Lee Varis: Books [sponsored link]

I've done this quickly to show the idea. I am sure with more deliberate attention, the results can be even better.

[RSStory]

This was pretty quick. I used the lasso tool to select his face and put it on a new layer. From there I used the selective color tool found here. I am using CS3.



Here are the settings that I used. I only altered the reds. Notice that I used the absolute method.



Here is the final. Could use some additional work to perfect it but this only took about a minute to do to this point.



Here is a comparison.

[soupman]

Amazing work! Thanks for the tips.

[tccoble]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Here was my go at it. Bear in mind that most of the time he has a red tint so I don't want to try and completely change his skin tone. Once again thanks to all.

[PhotosbyChuck]

You know what your grandson should look like without the burn, but to me your edit leaves his face looking a bit dirty. Something about the color...especially on his left (our right) cheek makes it seem that way to me. Scott's edit looks more natural to me. I'd never have guessed that an edit was done to the face on that one -- but you might given you know what he looks like for real.

Also, his date's arm is in a bad position, flat and close to the camera making it look very large. You might consider a liquefy touchup on that ... and never mention it to her!

[PhotosbyChuck]

Here is a sample edit before and after so you can see what I mean about the face and arm edits. For both, I made "minimal" changes. I think the result is natural, but could be taken further and still not be noticeable:

[JKlebPhoto]

Originally Posted by PhotosbyChuck

You know what your grandson should look like without the burn, but to me your edit leaves his face looking a bit dirty. Something about the color...especially on his left (our right) cheek makes it seem that way to me. Scott's edit looks more natural to me. I'd never have guessed that an edit was done to the face on that one -- but you might given you know what he looks like for real.

Also, his date's arm is in a bad position, flat and close to the camera making it look very large. You might consider a liquefy touchup on that ... and never mention it to her!

Might want to clone out the sunglasses too. Personal preference.