P H O TO S H O P F O R D I G I TA L P H O TO G R A P H E R S

Day Seventeen
Instructor:
Scott Kelby

Todays Lesson:
Fixing Fleshtones
What to do when youve corrected the photo, but one color
is too dominant (like your fleshtones are too red).

Key Concepts:
You can get a lot of things wrong when color correcting a photo, and most people wont know, but if you
get the fleshtones wrongits an instant giveaway that somethings wrong. The most common fleshtone
problem is that the fleshtones are too red and the people look sunburned. Heres what to do:
Go under the Adjustment Layer pop-up menu and choose Hue/Saturation. Change the Edit pop-up
menu from Master to Reds. Now, just drag the Saturation slider to the left to reduce the amount of red and
make the fleshtones look more natural.
The only problem with this technique is that it also reduces the amount of red in the rest of the photo. To
get around that, once youve removed the red, get the Brush tool and paint in black right over any areas
(outside the fleshtone areas) that have lost their red, and those areas will return.

Keyboard Shortcuts Used:

No new keyboard shortcuts were introduced in this lesson.

Additional Material Not Covered In Class:

This is another area where you can use Color Balance (rather than Hue/Saturation). Just move the sliders
slightly away from Yellow and Magenta (the two primary colors in fleshtones) to reduce the amount of red.