Photoshop to the rescue!
With summer around the corner we’ll soon be soaking up the sun! Unfortunately for some of us (like me!) our skin doesn’t really know how to go golden brown and we just end up looking like a lobster at a tomato festival glowing various shades of red and pink. Then to top it off someone whips out a camera and starts happy snapping.

 Who really wants to glow luminous red in any photo!?

 So here is a fantastic way to fix this problem and share your summer holiday pics without risking a hundred comments from your friends about how you are glowing instead of noticing that it’s actually Thailand behind you!

 Oh and if you have the unfortunate blessing of your cheeks turning bright red after half a glass of wine…then this will fix that too! (In the pictures anyway)

 Open the offending image in Photoshop.

 I got the picture from here: http://ninja4hire.blogspot.com/2010/05/sun-of-beach.html …it looks painful and right now I am thinkint that sunblock is the way to go!

Select Image > Adjustments > Hue & Saturation. 

In the little drop down tab that appears in the control box, click the down arrow and select RED. Red is the colour that we want to decrease so we are only focusing on changing that colour channel.

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Now move the top slider a little to the right (this will add a little more yellow pigment to the red) and then move the second slider a little to the left until you can see the redness fading.

 

 If you picture has red in other places apart from on the skin then you will want to use a mask instead of editing the whole scene.

 

If this is the case the open your image in Photoshop and at the bottom of your layers menu click the little half black-half white circle > select Hue and Saturation.

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A new layer will appear in your layers menu. Double clicking the control box for Hue and Saturation.

Do the same adjustments as discussed above. Then click ok. Now click on your layer mask and then select your paintbrush and wherever you don’t want your red-colour-reduction to be effective – simply paint right onto your picture with the black paint.

You will see that the paint does not show up on your image but rather on your layer mask. The black paint hides the hue&saturation effect and the white paint (if you paint over the black paint) will reveal the hue&saturation effect.

You an see in the example how I have simple painted one black line across his body – in the mask you can see one black line – in the image you can see the original colours being shown even though the rest of the image stays adjusted. 

 

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