Dark Pores & Blotchy Colour (Bleach Bypass Filter)

[SuperMe]

I'm using Photoshop CS6 and the Bleach Bypass filter from the Nik collection. My subject has dark pores on her legs and blotchy colour on her arms. The filter accentuates these issues resulting in unappealing black shadows. I have tried selective hueing but the result looked too uniform. I don't want to blur if it can be avoided because losing skin texture selectively in the legs and arms will look out of place in the rest of the image. I have tried transforming to the LAB colourspace and blurring the A layer but the texture and the problems are all in the L layer so this was ineffective. Does anyone have any ideas / techniques I can learn from? I want to keep the filter as apart from these problems it gives a great look.

Thanks

Nick

PS. The attached images are 100% crops. The ones with Ed on the end are with the filter applied.

[SuperMe]

Re: Dark Pores & Blotchy Colour (Bleach Bypass Fil

PPS. The legs are much more of a priority than the arms

[kav]

Re: Dark Pores & Blotchy Colour (Bleach Bypass Fil

Of course blurring a color channel didn't work. The marks are darker. The lines could be dealt with via the dodge tool. The dark marks could be cloned out. These really aren't that bad, and I can tell you from experience it's possible to do both of those things on an image like this without being obvious. Try on a small portion of it first to make sure it's working out okay. Turn clone tool to 90% if necessary.

[Profesh]

Re: Dark Pores & Blotchy Colour (Bleach Bypass Fil

PPS. The legs are much more of a priority than the arms

Is this the kind of effect you're after?

Edit: And for the bleach-bypassed version; http://i.snag.gy/umB9J.jpg

[philbach]

Re: Dark Pores & Blotchy Colour (Bleach Bypass Fil

Well I quick partial solution that may or may not work for you is to copy the layer and use lighten blending mod. Then use the move tool on the top layer and using the arrow, move the layer up and to the side a few pixels.

[Wolfman]

Re: Dark Pores & Blotchy Colour (Bleach Bypass Fil

Why don't you fix the blotchy problem before you apply the Nik filter and then it won't exaggerate what isn't their.