How do ya remove red rash on skin?

Weisel

This is not actually a rash, but I thought the headline would be best stated that way.

My client's hands are red here. I use both LR and PS CS4. How do I fix this is PS? Should be an easy thing I would think, but it happens to be one of the tricks I don't know of yet.

Here's my photo setup: I shot with my 5D, and 24-70 2.8L lens. We were in a dark basement, and I used my Lowel iLight (video light) to light him. I had it hanging accross a hanging cable. So, his hands for whatever reason look like they just got deep fried in french fry grease. It's due to lack of light, although I don't know why that turns them red.

Is there a way I can selectively alter color? (selective to an area)

eur0ed

Weisel wrote: »

This is not actually a rash, but I thought the headline would be best stated that way.

My clients hands are red here. I use both LR and PS CS4. How do I fix this is PS? Should be an easy thing I would think, but it happens to be one of the tricks I don't know of yet.

Here's my photo setup: I shot with my 5D, and 24-70 2.8L lens. We were in a dark basement, and I used my Lowel iLight (video light) to light him. I had it hanging accross a hanging cable. So, his hands for whatever reason look like they just got deep fried in french fry grease. It's due to lack of light, although I don't know why that turns them red.

Is there a way I can selectively alter color?

There probably isn't going to be enough info in the jpg to bring that back to a manageable level. If you shot it in raw, upload the file to megaupload or rapidshare and one of us in here will take a whack at it. The process is probably going to either require a spot adjustment in the raw editor or the image is going to have to be adjusted and exported twice from the raw file and then merged in PS.

jjbong

Is this closer to what you want?



I did this in PS CS3, basically using curves in LAB through a mask to decrease the reds in the red areas, after opening it up a bit (using Luminosity curves and Shadow/Highlight in RGB) to see what was going on. I can supply more details, if you like.

The casts in here were strange, as the dark part of the hands were very red, while the shadow on the head was relatively neutral. So the usual techniques for altering color casts in dark areas didn't work. I had to deal with the red where the red was, so LAB curves and a mask based on the A channel helped.

Foques

why not just drop saturation in reds, and darken them a bit?
pull the area to a different layer, work with saturation, and ta-da..

malch

Add a curves adjustment layer, select the red curve and pull the mid-point down a little. Then mask if and as necessary. This will often suffice. In some cases, you may want to tweak the blue and green channels too, in order to get just the skin tones you want.

There are more sophisticated techniques but this is quick and simple and generally does the job for me.

With CS5 and the latest ACR (don't recall if this will work with CS4) you can do it all with the HSL tab of ACR. It's pretty darn good with whole selective color thing.

Weisel

Thanks for the tweak jjbong, and thanks to the rest of you for the ideas. I will give it a go. I think jj's tweak my be pretty useable, but I still have other shots I need to fix too, so I need to figure this out. The only ones with red hands are the ones shot in this particular spot. I guess I caught him "red handed". Yeah, don't even pretend to laugh. It's a lame joke. I should delete it now, but I won't.

I'll report back here after moday with my progress. Gotta shoot a wedding saturday. Monday I can dabble in this more.
Thanks again all. Feel free to pass on more ideas if anyone has them. And yes, I shot it in RAW, as always. I think I had my wb set to tungsten.
Till next time...

divamum

SM red tutorial? I can't see why it wouldn't work on this as well, especially if you do it on a layer to limit it to the one area.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/red-skin-tones

jjbong

One little detail, in case you haven't worked with A or B masks in LAB. After you Apply Image to get the channel into the mask, you'll need to do an Auto-Levels on it (I think this has a new name in CS5) to expand its range. Otherwise, the tonal range of the channel will be somewhat small, and you won't get good discrimination in applying your curve to reddish areas and not neutral or greenish. You might even have to curve the mask a little to get the effect you want.

Andy

Try this awesome technique we got from Lee Varis' book, 'Skin' http://www.smugmug.com/help/red-skin-tones