getting rid of sunburn

[colonel5]

I took headshots of everyone in our company which will go on our business cards, and everyone's is great except one of the salesmen. His skin is blotchy, blemished, & sun burned. Yet the general manager wants me to make him not look like that. I was able to get rid of the blemishes and tone down the sunburn quite a bit, yet for whatever reason i can't get his skin to blend and I can't get some of the red out of the sunburn so it looks even more blotchy... I've used the clone stamp, healing brush, smudge tool, used a brush @ %15 with a nice sking tone to try and blend it in (plus curves, contrast, color balance, etc), but it nothing is working well. he either looks like a fake wax person with blotchy skin, or a guy that had to have his picture taken on the worst day possible without pro equipment...

any suggestions??? i'm open to trying anything

[morea]

hue/saturation? You might be able to do something with that.

[jimking]

Try "Selective color"-- Image-Adjustments-Selective color. Very handy color tool. Experiment with the color sliders. Red face? Use Red or Magenta or Yellow mode then use the sliders to remove only selected color. Just make sure you choose the "Absolute" button at the bottom of the window. :)

[Eraser Nubbin]

I hear that yogourt actually works to get rid of a sunburn.

[colonel5]

Well i just tried rubbing yogurt on my screen... it didn't work, then it occurred to me... duh, so i went to his office and rubbed yogurt on his face... but when i came back the picture still had a sunburn!

[morea]

lol! :D

[D-Frag]

use your polygonal tool, make a selection around the guys skin. Go to image>adjustments>channel mixer and go into your "Red" channel, bring the red down a bit until it gets neutralized. you can make additional changes in the blue and green channels to get it just right.

good luck

[Crimson]

Can you reshoot his picture in different lighting and photoshop him back into your picture? Photoshop is cool but good photography will take you father.

[D-Frag]

I have a trick, but it only works in CS...its for taking the tone of one photo, and making another one match it...wanna hear it...here it goes.

1. Open the photo that you want to repair.

2. Find an open a photo that has a skin tone that you like, this would be the photo to use as your matching photo.

3. Go back to the sunburn image you want to repair. Go under image menu>adjustments>match color, if you don't have Photoshop CS, quit now.

4. At the bottom of the match color dialog, choose the source photo that has the tone you want to match. As long as preview is turned on, you'll see the effect instantly. If the match makes the photo too dark (or too light) you can use the Luminanace slider to adjust the overall brightness without affecting the color. Also, you may need to decrease the saturation level of the colors after making this change, in chich case, you can drag the Color Intensity slider to the left. If the overall effect is too intense, drag the Fade slider to the right to lessen it.

5. When you click OK, the tones from the source image are applied to your sunburn image.

hope that helps you further

[morea]

Go under image menu>adjustments>match color, if you don't have Photoshop CS, quit now.

woo hoo! I'm done! :p

[colonel5]

thand D-Frag, i'll try that, i do have CS luckily enough!

[shellebelle]

woo hoo! I'm done! :p

Me too!

[JaCkinbOx]

The GDF folks have made some very good suggestions, but if it doesn't work out for you I'd be willing to take a crack at it if you buy me dinner. ;D

[disastermaster]

What a coincidence!

good photography took MY father.