skin whitening with selective colour

[greyscale]

Just a quick example of extreme skin whitening with selective colour and b/w adjustment layers. I used 2 selective colour layers, both with the red and yellow sliders in the red and yellow channels pushed up, the black slider pushed down to -100, both layers then set to screen blend mode and opacity around 60%. A b/w layer on top of those two with red and yellow moved up a little and set to lighten, blend mode opacity 60%. I also copied the background layer, moved it to the top of the stack and painted the eyes and lips back in with a white brush on a black layer mask.

[lucija]

nice & interesting, just don't like edges between skin and the shirt (but the hair on the shirt looks good). love posts like this one

[ray12]

Very nice job and a very nice concept. Thank you for sharing. Its always cool to learn new things.

[crex]

Thank you for Sharing

[andyong]

thank you for sharing it...

[_ManWithNoName_]

Any chance you can give a step by step guide.

I've

Created 2 slective colour adjustment layers. It brings up the Red Channel 1st.
You say you move Red / Yellow Sliders. There is no Red Slider.

The rest I can follow, but maybe you need to actually specify what a little is when you say, just a little e.t.c


Thanks
D

[greyscale]

Thanks for the responses, I do appreciate you all taking the time to say something nice, the only way to learn is to have work critiqued by others so it's all valuable feedback.
I know I wrote the opening thread too quickly and perhaps wasn't too clear so let me get into details, for ManWithNoName! The colour sliders in each mode have the same ranges as in curves or levels - cyan to red, magenta to green, yellow to blue although only cyan, magenta and yellow are actually named.
On the first selective colour layer I ended up with settings as follows:
Red mode: Cyan-Red slider +86
Magenta-Green slider 0
Yellow-Blue slider +65
Black -100
Yellow mode: Cyan-Red slider +77
Magenta-Green slider 0
Yellow-Blue slider -100
Black -100
On the second selective colour layer:
Red mode: Cyan-Red slider +89
Magenta-Green slider 0
Yellow-Blue slider +100
Black -100
Yellow mode: Cyan-Red slider +96
Magenta-Green slider 0
Yellow-Blue slider +100
Black -100
The second layer of course goes on top of the first, both were set to blend mode screen, the first layer at 61% and the second at 58%. The b/w layer on top of these had the preset Custom, the red slider at 86% and the yellow slider at 73%, blend mode of lighten at 63%. Looking at the image again I feel maybe the eyes and lips are too intense but the opacity here can be lowered to taste.
The main thing I learned from this image was the necessity of going backwards and forwards between the selective colour layers a few times to end up with this result, as I changed the settings on one it affected the other so I could go back into each layer and make more changes to push the image further. I probably went into each selective colour layer twice to make further adjustments before I reached the settings given above. The great thing about adjustment layers is their flexibility, you can go back into them at any time to make more changes. The other thing I've learned is always save the psd file and make notes as I go along or I'd never be able to remember how I got the effect afterwards! Bye for now!

[LloydM]

Thanks for sharing; with this proceedure you can easily get any shade wanted or needed ... ..

[_ManWithNoName_]

Hi Grey.

thanks for the response and detailed explanation. I've had a play and without your techinique would never get even close.

I've followed your selective colour values. I didn't add the BW layer.
Set the layers to Screen at the same opacity, then I just inverted the masks and painted in the skin, very roughly, but you could probably do better masking / colour range selection on the skin.

Again. Appreciative of the technique, I think on yours you may have pushed it too far (for me) and the lips look a little strange. As with all these things tho, it's tweaking to your own taste.

Really appreciate it and will def come in very handy..

Cheers

[greyscale]

Thanks for responding, ManWithNoName, You're right I did push it too far and I would certainly drop the opacity on the lips. I still have to learn a sense of restraint and proportion in retouching but for just an experiment it was interesting. I've already learned so much from this forum it's only right I should contribute something back. Hope to post some more stuff soon. Bye.

[p3r10]

Hi,

I had been pondering over your technique for the last hour or so to replicate the similar settings that were used. I used your technique however i changed two things:

1. Instead of using a straight out "selective colour" adjustment layer which affects the entire image, i did a channel mask selection then applied that to a "selective colour" adjustment layer. As the red channel is good for skin tone this masks the skin and allows each of the settings to be inputted without affecting the entire image as it would normally do.

2. With the "selective colour" settings themselves. From looking at these, in my opinion they appear all over the place apart from the black values. So instead of using say (+86 (red dropdown menu) cyan slider) i used 90.

**So with the numbers whatever the number is, it was changed to either 30, 60, 90. (whichever number was closer)**

Back to the workflow:

I proceeded to do as the technique asked (having two selective layers) both on screen at 60% opacity. I selected both of these layers, grouped them together in a folder. I applied a layermask (white) to this folder, used a brush at 50% opacity paint back in the clothing. Then changed the entire group(folder) to an opacity of 60%.

I would just like to thank you for sharing the initial technique