Lighten Skin Technique by André Costantini |
Occasionally, I spend time experimenting in Photoshop discovering new techniques especially when I have an image I really like, but feel like it needs just a little something more to make it have even more of an impact. This technique is a really simple way to lighten skin and enhance contrast. Though there are many ways to achieve the same or similar results, this one is really quick and easy. |
Step 1 Find a good candidate for this technique. This image contained many mid tones in the skin and I wanted to lighten and soften the skin.
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Step 2 Open the image in Photoshop and go under Variations (Image>Adjust>Variations). Select the Saturation option and the course adjustment. You can also go under the Channel mixer (Image>Adjust>Channel mixer) and select monochrome. Either of these techniques convert images to black and white biasing the Red Channel which makes skin generally look glowy and eyes darker.
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Step 3 Edit>Fade Variations (for your information you can Fade anything that you just did) Choose the blending mode Screen and reduce the percentage that the black and white mixes with the color. The number may change depending on the image but I would say it is usually between 25-50%.
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Step 4 Increase the contrast by opening Levels (Image>Adjustments>Levels) Move the right slider (the white side) to the left.
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Step 5 Because some of the saturation has been removed by fading a monochrome layer, we are going to add a little more back in (Image>Adjustment>Hue/Saturation) Slide the Saturation slider to add +10-15
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Experiment with this and be sure to see what the other blending modes do and you will discover additional techniques that may suit your style. |
