How do you deal with "hot" skin areas?

[Damo77]

Hi everyone,

I've been coming across this problem a fair bit lately.

eces15.jpg

Areas of skin that are very glowy.

What's the best way of dealing with these areas?

[Alison]

Hey Damo, Could you put up a smaller image - I can almost see that one

Sorry, just being silly do you have a larger image ?

[mquest]

Best isn't a good word to use when it comes to photoshop techniques ;-)

But one way to do it, is to sample a tone from the skin that isn't so saturated. Set the brush to Color mode, and paint over the glowy area. Use a fairly low opacity on the brush to begin with.

Give the Hue mode a try on the same way, it probably isn' better in this case, but its good to know what it does compared to Color mode.

Hope it helps!

[edgework]

Originally Posted by mquest

Best isn't a good word to use when it comes to photoshop techniques ;-)

But one way to do it, is to sample a tone from the skin that isn't so saturated. Set the brush to Color mode, and paint over the glowy area. Use a fairly low opacity on the brush to begin with.

Give the Hue mode a try on the same way, it probably isn' better in this case, but its good to know what it does compared to Color mode.

Hope it helps!

The problem with that method is that, by definition, in CMYK and RGB, as value lightens or darkens, color desaturates until you have just white or black. In that case, there is no color possible and applying tone in color mode will have no effect. LAB, however, will cheerfully let you spec a color that is completely light, or dark, yet totally Red, or Green or any other color. It's not an imaginary color, simply one that no monitor or printer could possibly display. But Photoshop will try anyway, and end up splitting the difference. So you can add tone to a blown out area and, if there happens to be any texture at all, it will show up. Since the screen representation is already RGB, you will be looking at Photoshop's RGB compromise even when still in LAB mode, and that's what you will get when you convert back to RGB. At that point, the healing brush can help add some texture into what was a totally blown-out highlight.

[mquest]

Originally Posted by edgework

The problem with that method is that, by definition, in CMYK and RGB, as value lightens or darkens, color desaturates until you have just white or black. In that case, there is no color possible and applying tone in color mode will have no effect. LAB, however, will cheerfully let you spec a color that is completely light, or dark, yet totally Red, or Green or any other color. It's not an imaginary color, simply one that no monitor or printer could possibly display. But Photoshop will try anyway, and end up splitting the difference. So you can add tone to a blown out area and, if there happens to be any texture at all, it will show up. Since the screen representation is already RGB, you will be looking at Photoshop's RGB compromise even when still in LAB mode, and that's what you will get when you convert back to RGB. At that point, the healing brush can help add some texture into what was a totally blown-out highlight.

I didn't answer a question about a blown-out highlight. I thought the question was about the saturated part below her chin. But... english isn't my native language so i could have been mistaken.

[edgework]

Originally Posted by mquest

I didn't answer a question about a blown-out highlight. I thought the question was about the saturated part below her chin. But... english isn't my native language so i could have been mistaken.

Good point. Hot spots to me mean really intense highlights, which the image seemed to have, but I can see your interpretation, which also fits the image.

[madclark]

1. Create a new layer.
2. With the eyedropper tool, click in the highlight area.
3. >Select>Color Range
4. Adjust the fuzziness control to include most of the highlighted area.
5. Deselect any non-skin areas of the photo
6. With the eyedropper tool again, select a medium skin tone from the picture.
7. >Edit>Fill>Use Foreground Color
8. Change the layer blend mode to Multiply
9. Reduce opacity to suit.

This is a quick and dirty, no painting method. There's lots of variation. You can add noise into your new layer to blend better as well as using Linear Burn or duplicate the layer and make one blend mode to Luminosity and one to Color and play with the opacity of each to best blend.

Just search the forums for "shine" and you'll see a lot of other people's comments as well. This is a thread with a good example image and some senior members commenting.

[Damo77]

Originally Posted by edgework

Good point. Hot spots to me mean really intense highlights, which the image seemed to have, but I can see your interpretation, which also fits the image.

Sorry for the confusion. Yes, I was referring to the glowing red skin under her neck. I'm not concerned about the highlights.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I'll give some of them a try.

[Dave.Cox]

How is this?

I used a photo filter adjustment layer. When selecting the photo filter, select color, and click in the color box. That will open the color picker. Click on the neck, (Or on the color that you want to reduce), to sample that color. With the color picker still open, change the sign on the numbers in the a and b values. (These are the LAB values. you can change them, even if you are not in LAB color mode). This will set the filter to the opposite of the offending color. Adjust the density to a value that adjusts the area to where you want it, and click OK. Now select the layer mask in the photo filter layer mask, and fill it with black. This will hide the entire mask. With a soft brush, paint over the areas that need to be filtered.