The Photoshop® CS Book for Digital Photographers

Adjusting RGB Flesh Tones

So what do you do if you’ve used Curves to properly set the highlights, midtones, and shadows, but the flesh tones in your photo still look too red? You can’t use the “getting-proper-flesh-tones-for-a-printing-press” trick, because that’s only for CMYK images going to press. Instead, try this quick trick for getting your flesh tones in line by removing the excess red.

Step One.

Open a photo that you’ve corrected using the Curves technique shown earlier. If the whole image appears too red, skip this step and go on to Step Three. However, if it’s just the flesh-tone areas that appear too red, get the Lasso tool and make a selection around all the flesh- tone areas in your photo. (Hold the Shift key to add other flesh-tone ...