While redness can be caused by a number of natural factors, this is also a particularly handy technique for reducing the results of fake tan, which often appears as orangey-red in photographs. Once you’ve mastered this technique, you can also use selective colour ranges to add contrast, accentuate highlights, or fully replace colours. We’ve used Adobe Photoshop to complete this process, which is available separately or as part of Adobe Creative Cloud. Some students are eligible for an extended free trial of Creative Cloud, and there are also ways to get Photoshop for free. Before working directly on the skin, take the time to correct exposure or white balance issues for the whole image. You can see the original shot on the left and my initial corrections on the right. Go to Select > Color Range. Tick the Detect Faces option and slide the Fuzziness slider up to 50%. This controls the feathering of your selection mask – the higher the fuzziness, the smoother your selection will be. Tip: If you can’t find the adjustments panel on the right of your screen, pop up to Window > Adjustments to access it. Click on the drop down menu that currently says ‘RGB’ and change this to ‘Red’. The ‘Input’ number should stay at 128; only the output number should change and will vary dependent of the amount of redness in your model’s skin. Be careful not to drop this output number too much or your model will start to look green (unless you want him or her to look like the Wicked Witch of the West).
