HELP!! i'm a newbie!

[DanaB]

Hi! I wanted to introduce myself first, then beg for help!! My name is Dana and I'm a beginner at photo retouching. I recently got Photoshop CS2 and I'm learning alot from this site on things to do with it. The main problem I'm having right now is getting rid of red blotchy skin. For the life of me, I cannot fix it!

So if any of you can give me some step by step directions, that would be great! The pic is of me, and I am very fair skinned. The day the pic was taken, it was pretty cold out. So my nose especially is blotchy. But my entire face is red blotches!! HELP ME PLEASE!! hehe

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g2...9/P1010955.jpg

[KR1156]

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213

this link (to the tutorial) is done by a member on here that really smooths out blotchy skin, it's an awesome tutorial.

also, not knowing how far along you are in photoshop, you should try lowering the saturation of the reds in the face. there are many different methods to do this i like to make a "hue/saturation adjustment layer" and work on the "reds"

hope this helps.

[Daviskw]

Hi Dana

Here is another way.. slower but more control I think.

Duplicate your background... name the duplicate Blur

Open a blank layer above and fill with 50 % gray... then apply noise at 1.5 pixels or so. Change the blend mode to Overlay name it noise. Turn the layer off for a second.

Go back to the blur layer and choose a small Healing brush and click, don't drag all over the face. Go around blemishes you want to keep like moles and bits of hair. Stay close but away from edges that will blur. Stay away from eyes and eyebrows. Don't worry how smooth just get rid of blotches and such, you can bring back as much as you want later.

Now turn off the blur layer and click on the background. Choose the lasso and lasso an area, say the neck. Apply a 8 pixel feather. Now turn on the noise layer and choose Edit Copy Merged. Now go to the top of the layer pallet and edit paste.

Turn on your blur layer but keep the pasted layer active and slowly reduce the opacity. It will allow the original show thru the blur...stop when it looks right.

Now turn off the blur layer go back to the background and select another area and do the same until you have the face adjusted as wanted.

What you are doing is blending a healed smooth layer… the blur.. with the original layer with noise applied.

Seems complicated but it really is easy once you do it.

Butch

[Daviskw]

Here is another way

Open a Channel mixer set to the lighten blendmode.

The red channel does not contain many blotches so leave it alone. Choose the green channel and add red till the skin evens out... you can reduce green a little if needed. Then with the blue channel add blue to offset the yellow. You may want to open a Hue/saturation to adjust saturation and color then maybe add a red or warming filter to get back some of the skin color.

Butch

[mistermonday]

Dana, welcome to RP. There are many ways to do this in PS. Here is a simle effective way. Image > Adjust > Hue/Stauration. Select the Red channel and with a tight spectrum just adjust the red content of your face to match the yellow color. This equalizes the color but still leaves a bit of mottled pattern. Application of a small amount of noise filter smooth it out nicely.
Regards, Murray

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Dana,

Another easy way for you is as follows.

New layer. set blend mode to lighten. Now select Clone Tool and set to about 10% opacity, uncheck "Aligned", and select a soft brush.

Now select a light unblotched area of skin, and slowly clone over the darker areas. Don't take them all out totally, as they add depth to the skin.

Finally, you'll usually find you've overdone things a touch, so adjust the layer opacity till you get the most natural effect.

[Flora]

Hi Dana,

welcome to RP!!

This Thread alone is already giving you an idea of how many ways you can follow to get to the same or similar results with Photoshop!!

I used:

* Neat Image, a noise removing software which can be downloaded free here ... Neat Image comes with a help file, but you can find tutorials, tips and tricks on 'how to...' on their site. (Please, let me know if you'd like to know exactly how I used it)

* a Levels and a Selective Colors Adjustment Layers on your nose only.

[DanaB]

thank you all so much for the suggestions. i'm gonna try them all!!

Dana