I am a film photographer and had my negatives scanned at ~2.2MP, and the scans seem slightly washed-out. After adjusting levels, the entire image looks good except for high-contrast skin areas, where the transition from highlights to shadows becomes very saturated (and very yellow/orange). I have tried multiple Levels and Hue/Saturation settings, but none work. The overly saturated yellow and oranges seem to be the scanner's problem.

I'm really not very good at manual selection or manual spot-editing (dodging, burning, etc.). I'd rather use just a Photoshop filter, or at most the magic wand tool (which I would call "automatic selection." Can anything be done in this manner, or do I have to use selective desaturation? I've included crops of the "problem areas" and nearby "good areas" and I assure you, the rest of the image looks good.

First image is the thumb/index finger of a hand, second image is someone's left arm in the water.

It's hard to tell exactly what's happening without a 'before and after' of the same crop.

Possible things to try:
Set your levels layer to 'luminosity'.
Adjust the levels of each channel individually.
Make sure you're not clipping.

Good luck.

Welcome to RP.
There are many ways to reduce the orange / yellow. One method is to use Image > Adjust > Selective Color. Choose Yellow from the pull down menu in the diialog window and then drag the Yellow slider from the center to the left and click OK. If it is not enough, repeat the command a 2nd time.
Regards, Murray

Hi gpuica,

This isn't a scanner problem, I see it every day in digital photos that require major midtone adjustments.

I wish I'd found a brilliant fix, but I haven't. The best way I've found is to use Replace Color (in Image-Adjustments). Click on the problem colour, adjust the fuzziness as necessary (to choose similar colour) then use the sliders to correct the colour.

Mainly I use the Saturation slider to desat those out-of-control reds, but I often also need to use the Lightness and/or the Hue sliders.

The best thing about this technique is that you don't need to do any selections (well, not often anyway.)

Hope this helps.

It's kind of hard to tell for sure with such a small low res cropped piece of the image, but the best fix is probably to set the level, using the histogram and the info pallette to exam the current and adjusted colors.