Photoshop How To

Here’s a simple but common problem with digital photography: oversaturated red faces. This can occur because of a lighting issue, a camera issue, or because your subject already has somewhat flushed skin.

Combine in the fact that some digital sensors tend to oversaturate the red channel and you’ll end up with a portrait of someone who looks like they are breaking out in hives. Not good!

Fortunately, there are some relatively easy fixes in Photoshop for a red-faced portrait. For one, many people know about adjusting the hue and saturation sliders to reduce red skintones in an image. But that doesn’t always fully eliminate the problem.

In the below video from Digital Mastery, Ben Willmore explains a better way to fix red faces using Photoshop.

“Learn how the pros remove red from faces,” Willmore says. “We'll go beyond the standard technique of Hue/Saturation and will also take a look at why a lot of images from the Internet always have red faces. In the process, you'll learn how to isolate colors using Hue/Saturation, how to paint with color and how to perform basic color shifts using curves. You'll learn a bunch that will be applicable even if you never run across skintones that needs fixing.”

Willmore is someone who should know about this problem. According to him, his face always comes out red on camera.

“My skintone always renders red on camera,” he says. “Doesn’t matter what camera you point at me, my skin looks red. So, let’s grab a version of this picture. Let’s fix my skin.”

Watch below as Willmore walks you his professional level but easy to understand process of eliminating red in faces using Photoshop.