What if I use curves to correctly set highlights, midtones, and shadows but the skin color in the photo still looks too red? This technique, which will be described below, can be used to eliminate excess red and restore the normal color of the skin.

first step:

figure 1

Open the photo that was corrected using the curve technique demonstrated earlier in this chapter. If the whole image is too red, skip this step and go directly to the third step. However, if the skin tone area is just too red, press L to select the lasso tool and create a selection around all the skin tone areas in the photo, hold the Shift key and hold it, and place other skin areas (such as arms, hands, and legs) To add to the selection, hold down the Alt (Mac:Option) key and hold it to subtract from the selection. The constituency can be a very loose constituency (it does not include her ears and neck) as shown in Figure 6-38.

The second step:

figure 2

Select Feather from the Modify submenu of the selection menu, enter 3 pixels in the feather radius, as shown in Figure 6-38, and click OK. Adding a feather can make the edges of the selection appear softer, avoiding the adjusted edges to appear too obvious.

prompt:

After creating the skin tone region selection, you can hide the selection zone border from the view by pressing Ctrl-H (Mac:Command-H) (this makes it easier for you to see).

third step:

image 3

Go to the Image menu and select Hue/Saturation from the Adjustment menu. When this dialog box pops up, click the Edit drop-down list and select Red to adjust only the red color in the selected area of ​​the photo (if you only create a selection around the skin tone).

the fourth step:

Figure 4

The rest of the work is simple: reduce the saturation metrics and make skin tones appear more natural. Drag left to saturate

Degrees slider, reduce the amount of red, you will see the effect of eliminating red when dragging the saturation slider. After the image effect looks normal, click the OK button in the dialog box, then press Ctrl-D (Mac: Command-D) to deselect it and end the method.

Figure 5 Before processing

Figure 6 After processing

After processing, skin color is more delicate and real.