How to change skin tone color in Photoshop?

You took a photo and the skin looks pale or washed out. You like the background and pose but hate the skin color. Do you know that you can fix the skin tone in Photoshop in less than a minute? Let’s see how to change skin tone color in Photoshop.

In this tutorial, I’ll be using the Color Range and blend mode to change skin tone color in Photoshop. It’ll be a short tutorial.

Brief Steps

  1. We’ll select the skin ton using the Color Range command
  2. We’ll fill the selected area with skin color.
  3. We’ll use Layer Mask for some fine-tuning

Final

Initial

Step 1 – Select the skin

If you’re using Photoshop CS6 or newer versions, selecting a skin tone is fairly easy. We can easily do it using the Color Range command in Photoshop.

Go to Select > Color Range.

Now, choose “Skin Tones” and turn on “Detect Faces”.

Drag the Fuzziness slider to the left or right to make the selection better. You can see the selection in the preview section below in the same window. White color shows that the area that’s going to be selected and black shows the areas which are not going to be.

Press OK.

This is my selection. I know that it looks a bit weird.

Step 2: Change the skin tone in Photoshop

Open the layer panel by going to Window > Layers or by pressing F7.

Create a new layer by pressing Cmd + Shift + N / Ctrl + Shift + N. Change the blend mode to color.

Click on the foreground color.

Choose nice skin color. I am choosing #f9ad81. Put this value in the HEX code. Press OK.

Now, this skin color is your foreground color.

Fill the selection with the foreground color by pressing Opt + Delete / Alt + Backspace. Press Cmd + D / Ctrl + D to deselect.

Here’s the photo.

Step 3 – Finetune the photo

We’ll remove the area where unwanted skin tone color is filled using the Layer Mask. Click on the layer mask in the layer panel.

This will add a layer mask next to the layer which has the skin tone color.

Grab the Brush Tool from the tool panel or press Shift + B again and again until it activates.

Make the foreground color black.

Now start brushing on the area from where you want to remove the skin tone color.

Now, reduce the opacity of the skin tone layer to somewhere between 50-70%.

Here you go.

 

How to brighten skin in Lightroom in 1 minute?

Lightening skin in Lightroom takes time. You grab Adjustment Brush and then selectively lighten the skin. What if I tell you that you can brighten skin in Lightroom in just 1 minute? Wouldn’t you like it?

This method is super duper fast. But it has a tradeoff. You don’t get super duper flexibility like the Adjustment Brush.

So, let’s start. But I want to show you after and before first.

After

Image by Himanshu Gunaratna from Pixabay

Before

Let’s start.

Video

If you like watching videos then here’s the video for you.

Step 1 – Find the HSL panel

Go to the HSL panel. Click on the Luminance.

Now, click on the circular icon at the top left.

After the click, the icon will change and you’ll see two arrows. One at the top and another at the bottom.

Step 2 – Brighten the skin in Lightroom

Now, place the cursor on the skin. Drag the cursor upwards. This will brighten the skin in Lightroom.

In the panel, you’ll also see that the luminance value of Red, Orange, and Yellow increases because our skin is basically made up of these three colors.

This is all, guys. Didn’t it take just 1 minute?

Summary

  1. Open the photo in Lightroom
  2. Activate the Luminance tab in the HSL panel
  3. Click on the circle icon at the top left
  4. Put the cursor on the skin and drag it upwards
  5. Correspondingly, check the value of the Red, Yellow, and Orange in the Luminance tab.

I have written tons of tutorials on Lightroom. Check that out if you want to see more Lightroom tips like this. I have also made free Lightroom presets. Download them to speed up your work.

If you like to see more tips like this on Photoshop, check out my Photoshop tips. If you want to learn Photoshop in-depth, check out my free course on 30 days to learn Photoshop.