change skin color in photoshop
In this article, we will see how to change skin color in Photoshop. Photoshop has made it super easy to change or adjust someone’s skin tone in a digital photo. The process uses some essential color selection and adjustment tools, and it’s a fun way to turn a friend’s face nauseatingly green or lessen the effects of too strong, sometimes even orange, makeup.
This tutorial works fine on most versions of Photoshop for MacOs and Windows. Now let’s see how to change skin color in Photoshop.
Table of Contents
How to change skin color in Photoshop
1. Select the skin you want to modify
You can use any of the selection tools available in Photoshop, but for this guide, I will be using the Magic Wand tool. Select the tool, change the tolerance to 35, and set the “Sample Size” to Point Sample.
From there, it’s time to start selecting. Left-click once on the face, hold down the Shift key, and continue left-clicking to select as much of the face as possible. If you select an area of the image you don’t want, such as her, hold down Alt or Option and left-click the area to deselect it.
This may take some time to become perfect. After you’ve selected the general area, you can decrease the wand’s tolerance to adjust the areas you missed or the areas you don’t want to deselect (like the eyes).
2. Reduce saturation and adjust the image
With the face selected, go to the menu bar at the top of Photoshop and select Image -> Adjustments -> Saturation.
Now go to Image -> Adjustments -> Levels, then start with the rightmost slider in the “Input Levels” section and move it to the left. Then do the same with the middle slider. This varies on a case-by-case basis, so you’ll need to play around here to reduce the colors properly.
3. Color the face
All you need to do now is add some color and adjust it to your liking. Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation, or press CTRL + U or CMD + U on your keyboard and check the “Colorize” option.
Now that we’ve added some color again, it’s time to adjust the tone. Use the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders to set the desired skin tone. Again, you’ll have to play around with this to get where you want to go.
For small changes in skin color
If I wanted to make minor adjustments to the skin tone (like making the face a little less red in this case), after selecting the face area with the Magic Wand Tool, you can simply go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation, or through pressing CTRL + U or CMD + U on your keyboard and lower the saturation a bit.
Small saturation adjustment after the Magic Wand tool.
Depending on the image, you can get better results by selecting nothing and directly adjusting the saturation of the entire image to adjust the skin tone instead of changing it.
Conclusion: How to change skin color in Photoshop
And that’s how to change skin color in Photoshop. I’m sure you could do much better. However, we are not trying to convert an image in Photoshop to the original photo, just trying to change skin color in Photoshop. Keep following for more Photoshop Tips and Tricks.
