== Love Photography == Delight in Light ==

Tuesday 6 March 2012

Quick, Simple Photoshop Fix for Blotchy Skin

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

Red Patchy Skin Quick Fix

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 :)

7 comments:

My name means Hope said...

Great help! Made such a difference to my newborn photos. Thank you so much, great tip! :D

Mark H said...

Thanks - glad it helped :)

Anonymous said...

This is fantastic. Thank you!

Mark H said...

Glad it helped :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Mark. I know this is an older post but it is simple to follow and I have only one question. Number 5 might be a little different now that there is CC. Could you help me through that on how I make the lips or other areas more red like they were, but keeping the Channel Mixer for the overall face and neck?

Mark H said...

Hi - I must say that I haven't tried this recently, but I think step 5 should still be the same in CC - I'll check when I get a chance. Probably the best approach is to fill the layer mask with black and then use white paint on the layer mask to apply the effect to particular areas as needed.

Note: Google "Photoshop layer mask" if you need more info on how to use that feature of Photoshop if you're not sure about what layer masks are or how to use them - there's lots of info on that subject available on the web :)

Mark H said...

Ok - just checked - still works the same in CC. Only difference is step 3 (clicking "Ok") is no longer necessary with the CC interface.