Quick, Simple Photoshop Fix for Blotchy Skin

Here's a quick and simple Photoshop tip for fixing red patchy / blotchy skin in Photoshop:

Here's how you do it:

1. Create a new "Channel Mixer" adjustment layer above your image layer
2. Set the various settings in the Channel Mixer dialogue box to the following values:
   • Output Channel: Gray
   • Red: +70%
   • Green: -10%
   • Blue: +40%
   • Constant: 0%
   • Monochrome checked
3. Click "OK" to accept
4. Set the blend mode of your adjustment layer to "Luminosity"
5. Use black & white paint on the layer mask that should have been created with your adjustment layer to restrict the effect to the relevant parts of the image (for example, you will probably not want this effect to be applied to the person's lips!)

Of course the result is not likely to be perfect, and you will probably have to invoke other retouching techniques, but I found that it did make a remarkable improvement with very little effort (once I'd figured out the technique, anyway!).

Good luck - hope this helps :)