Skin Blotchiness

[nick24a]

Hi guys. I recently completed a retouch for a makeup artist, The client was very happy with the end product but being a perfectionist I wasn't satisfied. My only problem was some slight blotchiness in the different skin tones on the cheek. I used a blend of the healing, patch and clone tools. To reduce some of the different skin tones i tried using the color range selection - hue saturation but I didn't like the result. How would you guys deal with blotchy skin. Would you unify the tones or leave it blotchy?. I have attached both the original skin and my retouch for your critique and for if you would like to have ago at this skin.

http://i1017.photobucket.com/albums/...inoriginal.jpg

http://i1017.photobucket.com/albums/...nretouched.jpg

I hope you can download from here. as RPRO only allows 100kb

[mistermonday]

Nick, I see two challenges with the image. The first is color blotchiness - there are patches of red in the skin. The second is uniform lighting across the image.
For the first solution, I opened the image in Adobe Camera Raw and in the HSL tab, moved the top slider (Red) over to the right until the red areas matched the orange of the skin (attachment 1).
To even out the lightness a little, I selected the luminosity of the image, selected the inverse (just the dark portions of the image, jumped it to its own layer above the background, and set its blend mode from Normal to Screen and reduced the opacity to 50% (attachemnt 2).
There are a number of other ways to approach these two types of adjustments.
Regards, Murray

[nick24a]

Hi Murray

You are a legend thank you so much for the help. I love the results you got with your techniques. Is there much difference between making the HSL adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw as apposed to PS? Secondly I understand what you did in the second technique, but can you be more specific? what are you using to select the luma? and inverting it? Im sure i already know and am being slow but always good to be sure

Thank you again mate.

[mistermonday]

There are some tools in ACR which are unique. While you can accomplish pretty much the same end result in Photoshop, it is oftion more time consuming, more steps, more difficult. The HSL panel in ACR has color ranges that are not isolated the same way as in PS. You also have some really precision fine tuning capability between the color ranges, luminance, and saturation.
The lightening technique is a s follows:
After your ACR adjustment, open the image in PS. Hit the Ctrl+Alt+2 keys. This will select all of the image pixels whose values are in the range of midtone to brightest highlights. What is left are midtones to darkest shadows. Since that is what you want, jsut do Ctrl+Shift+I (or Select>Inverse) to select the darker pixels. Next Crtl+J will jump that selection to a new layer. Change that new layer blend mode to screen to lighten. Or you could do a levels adj or curves adj. You could also add a layer mask to selectively apply the lightening effect to specific areas.
Regards, Murray

[nick24a]

Thanks Murray, you just made me a better retoucher .

[mistermonday]

Nick, you are very welcome!
Regards, Murray

[mikedimples]

Great advice mistermonday. You've been so full of useful advice lately.

[mistermonday]

Mike, thank you.
Regards, Murray