Hi All,

I have a picture of a newborn baby that I'm trying to reduce facial redness on. Levels helped but not much. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Mona

Hi Mona, it would help if you could post a copy of the picture so that we could see what the problem was. That way we can give you the best advice.

Hi Gary,

I can't post the full picture because it belongs to a client. The photo was taken from a Canon digital camera, probably a newer model because of the large number of pixels the image contains. The photo looks like it was taken when the baby was only a few days old and the skin has a blotchy red look to it. I'd like to tone down the red a bit and make the skin more porcelain looking.

When I adjust the levels on this photo the redness is even more pronounced.

The photo on the left is the darkest section taken from the cheek and the photo on the right is from the forehead and is more what I'd like to strive for.

Thanks for the suggestions.

How about doing a by-the-numbers Curves adjustment layer (Katrin Eismann goes through this step-by-step in her book, which I don't happen to have to hand at the moment).

That blotchy look is one of the reason so many newborn photos are done in b/w or diffused... LOL! Maybe also use some of the standard techniques for retouching adult skin but applied with a light hand?

This should be easy if you have Photoshop CS.

Open the image and also open your light skin sample.

Select the darker areas with a feathered edge and then use match color, selecting your lighter sample as the source image.

I just did a straight rectangle selection on this example.

Christine

you could also try the adjustments - selective coloring - red and take the red slightly down

Try adjusting "Selective Color" with these settings:
Reds
Cyan +95
Magenta -31
Yellow 0
Black -67
Relative (checked)

Make a "Levels" adjustment with these settings:
Channel: RGB
Input values: 0 / 1.11 / 223

It should look very close to your target.

Hi Mona,

I used Levels and Hue&Saturation to match the colours of the lighter skin sample you posted ... added then a Selective Colors Adjustment Layer to liven up the skin colour a bit....

:wavey:

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm using Photoimpact though not Photoshop. I don't think there is an option to select a color channel and modify other color channels within that channel. You can adjust curves and levels but any color modifcations seem to be limited to all channels or just highlights, midtones and shadows.

I have Elements - maybe I'll give that a try.

Thanks!

Hi Mona, Sorry I did'nt get back to you, but plenty of others had given you solutions, so I figured you did'nt really need my input.

However, since you don't have photoshop, some of these options aren't available to you. You say you've got Elements, then this may work.

I usually use Photoshop, but I've still got a copy of Elements 2, so I tried out using that, and this is my solution.

1. Using Eyedropper, sample from good area. In Elements this resets your foreground colour. Click on your foreground colour pad, and the colour selector comes up, note the hue, saturation, brilliance (HSB) settings.

2. Now use eyedropper to sample from bad area, and note HSB settings for that.

3. Select bad area.

4. Enhance - Adjust Colour - Replace Colour. To bring up Replace Colour tool.

Click on bad area, then adjust fuzziness to select pixels you wish to change.
Now adjust the 3 sliders, Hue, Saturation, Lightness as follows.

For example, If the HSB settings for good area were (H21, S37, B52) and those for the bad area were (H7, S58, B43) then move the Hue slider to right to +14, Saturation slider to left to -21, and Lightness (the equivalent of Brightness) to +9. These are the differences between the good and bad values of HSB.

This will get your bad areas to the same colour as the good. Or near enough to adjust by eye.

Hope this helps.