Photoshop technique for removing red blotchiness on newborn babies

swingking

I'm processing these images I shot of a newborn baby (1 week old) and I'm trying to come up with a solution to remove the red blotches on her face.

Anyone have any suggestions?

DaireQuinlan

Is she red and blotchy ? If so, then why are you trying to remove the red blotchiness from the pictures ?

BostonB

I'm not entirely sure why you want to do that. Whats the photo for?

ditpaintball

I a look in this thread, lots of suggestions going around. Guy Gowans methods get my vote.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056328882

swingking

Oh I was of the opinion that the red colour is not appealing in a photo. Perhaps I'm making a mistake then

Thanks for the advice

swingking

BostonB wrote: »

I'm not entirely sure why you want to do that. Whats the photo for?

Just photos the mother wants to have printed. I only took the photos as a favour. Not a professional job or anything

BostonB

Well if it was for an professional advert or something I'd remove them. For a personal photo I dunno. A lot of people don't like that.

oshead

How red and how blotchy? If you are doing it as a favour then i'd say don't use up too much of your time 'fixing it in PS'. If you think you'll make some spondulicks from it by making the skin 'normal', then get out the curves adjustments and get to work.

Pop it into camera RAW, reduce the reds slightly, and reduce the clarity. Bada bing, bada boom.

CabanSail

When I did a family wedding a while ago, there was a lady who looked ok in person but on some shots her face looked like she had red clown make up on. I know that she would have died if the group shots went back looking like that as the bright red drew the eye straight to it.

The solution I came up with was to write an action based on Guy's workflow. IIRC what I did was use the channel mixer to selectively desaturate red tones, then passed that through a negative red channel mask and all this was grouped behind another mask so that I could simply brush in the effect where it was required. I then just added those layers to any image which was a problem and could then reduce her redness with control each time it was a problem. The result was that she looked how I perceived on the day and not the way she was recorded.

You could try something similar here.

In The Sticks

...or you could 'grayscale' the picture, and have a classy B&W photo instead

CabanSail

In The Sticks wrote: »

...or you could 'grayscale' the picture, and have a classy B&W photo instead

Just going to grayscale rarely delivers a classy B&W image in my experience.

swingking

CabanSail wrote: »

When I did a family wedding a while ago, there was a lady who looked ok in person but on some shots her face looked like she had red clown make up on. I know that she would have died if the group shots went back looking like that as the bright red drew the eye straight to it.

The solution I came up with was to write an action based on Guy's workflow. IIRC what I did was use the channel mixer to selectively desaturate red tones, then passed that through a negative red channel mask and all this was grouped behind another mask so that I could simply brush in the effect where it was required. I then just added those layers to any image which was a problem and could then reduce her redness with control each time it was a problem. The result was that she looked how I perceived on the day and not the way she was recorded.

You could try something similar here.

I am very familiar with Guy Gowan's techniques. I 'm curious to know how you blended the channel mixer to remove the red tones.

Thanks

CabanSail

I have just been back and found that I have deleted all the PSD's and don't have the action either. So I went back to work out what I did again. My recollection was slightly out though close. What I used was the Selective Colour with an inverse Red Mask. On the Selective Colour in Red I set Cyan on and in Yellow I turned Cyan & Magenta off. I then placed these in a group with a localising mask. You can then brush in the reduction with a low opacity white brush.

Does that make sense?

swingking

super advice. Thanks

CabanSail

If you need to target it further then calculate the mask and refine it.