This is the image that I'm going to work
with, and this is the image where I'm going to sample the skin tones.
I really like the skin tones in this photo,
and I would like to apply them onto this image here.
To make things easier to understand, I'll place both images in the same document.
Although this is not necessary to do so,
select the Move tool, then drag this image onto the other tab.
Photoshop will switch tabs and you can continue dragging the image to the new tab
and release and the photo will appear on top of the original image.
And this is a good spot here.
All I really need to do is have space to sample the colors.
So, this will work.
The next step is to create a blank layer,
and from the Toolbar I'm going to select the Eyedropper tool and I'm going to
select a sample size that's at least five by five average.
And what that tool will do is sample an area that is five X five pixels and
average out the color instead of just sampling one color, which might not give
you an accurate representation of the skin tone.
With the Eye Dropper tool selected and
five X five average, what I'm going to do is look at the image and sample a color
that is representative of the skin tones, but not shadows like in this area here, or
highlights like in this area here. So what color really represents the skin tones?
Well, I would say maybe that a color
around here, maybe even her forehead over here.
I'll settle for this color right here.
It's neither a highlight or a shadow.
Then I can select the Brush tool and I
will increase my brush size and set the hardness all the way to 100.
Then I'm just going to paint in this new blank layer like so next, repeat the same
process with the other face, this time with the Bristol Active.
You can hold Alt and Windows option on the Mac to temporarily enable the Eyedropper
tool, and again, select the color that is not a shadow.
So, not that color and not a highlight.
A color that really represents your skin tones.
In this case, maybe a color like this one will work.
When you release the Alt or Option key
the Brush will come back and you can paint next to that other color.
So now we have the two colors side by side.
Your job now is to turn the color on the right into the color on the left.
And to do so, I'm going to create a curve adjustment layer.
But before I do, I'm going to select the
last little tool and just make a selection around her face like so.
And I'll create a Curves adjustment layer.
Now, this step is important because we
don't want the adjustment layer affecting the original colors.
And I do need the adjustment layer to be on top of the layer stack.
And I'll show you why in a moment with this Curves adjustment layer.
What I'm now going to do is so that you can see what's going on is go into the
Eyedropper tool and nested under that you'll see the color sampler tool.
And first I'm going to click over the
sample color and then over the color I'm trying to change.
And on the right here you can see that the Info panel came up.
If it doesn't come up for you, you can always go into Window and Select Info.
But you'll see the colors of the sample
image on the left and the colors of my image on the right.
All I have to do now is make sure that the RGB values of the sample skin tone color
match the RGB values of my model skin tones.
And that's what we're going to do with the Curves adjustment layer.
Now, earlier I said that you needed the
adjustment layer on top of the layer stack.
That's because you'll get different values
if you drag it below the brushstrokes here.
So, make sure that you keep this above so that you see the right values.
And that's why we created a layer mask, so
that we can see the result in the face but not affect the brush strokes here.
So, what I'm going to do now is go into each individual channel and try to match
those numbers and it's going to be very easy.
Let me show you how to do that.
The first step is to select the values that we're going to edit.
I'll enable the on image adjustment tool,
but watch what happens when I click to sample this value.
It does create a point on the curve, but
it doesn't create a point in the RGB channels.
And that's what I want.
I want the point on the actual RGB channels as well.
So, let me delete this.
One way of deleting a point is by holding the control key on Windows.
That's the Command key on the Mac and clicking, and that gets rid of it.
And what I'm going to do instead is hold
Ctrl and Shift on Windows, that's Command and Shift on the Mac
and click on this color here on the right.
which is the color of her face.
Notice that nothing happened on this curve.
But if I click on the dropdown and go into
the red channel, you'll see that we have a point and I can do the same thing.
By going into the green channel, you'll see that the point is there.
So, by using that keyword shortcut and clicking over this color, I've added a
point to each individual RGB channel that is controlling this color.
So, then when I change it I should be able
to change the color and match the one on the left.
Also, from this drop-down, notice the keyboard shortcuts on the right.
I will use them throughout the tutorial to toggle between the different RGB channels.
Let's start with the red channel.
Notice that we have the point selected already in the center.
If it's not selected, you can just click on it, or you can use the plus key to
toggle up to the next point, or the minus key to toggle down to the next point.
What I'll do now is with this central point selected, which is the one on the
right, I need to match the value on the left for the red channel.
The R here. This is where I'm at the red channel.
Now we need to take this red channel value 117 and turn it into 174.
And to do so all I have to do is go into the output here and type in 174.
Then I can hit Enter to commit the changes that's Return on the Mac and I can press
Alt and the number four to go into the green channel.
The center point is automatically selected
and I can now enter this value and the output 123.
So I'll type in 123.
Hit Enter to commit to changes and I'll hit Alt, which is option on the Mac and
the number five to toggle into the blue channel.
The center point is automatically selected.
And now in the output we'll enter the value in the blue channel which is 105.
And notice that just by changing those RGB values, the skin tones in our model look
very similar to the skin tones in the sample image.
I'm going to go back into the RGB
composite by selecting it for the dropdown, but you can use the keyboard
shortcut Alt and the number two on Windows option and the number two on the Mac.
And I'll collapse the Info panel because we don't need it anymore.
And now from the RGB composite I can adjust the brightness of the skin tones.
In this case, I'll simply create an S
curve to increase the contrast of the image.
At this point you can delete these two layers if you like.
I'll do so by selecting both by holding
Shift and then pressing the Delete or Backspace key.
Next, let's make sure that we're only applying the skin tone effect to the
actual skin and not other areas of the image.
We'll start by making the layer mask completely black.
First select the layer mask then fill with black.
Black is currently our background color so
you can press controlling Backspace and windows that's Command delete on the Mac.
Next select the brush tool from the
toolbar and paint with white over the areas where you want to reveal the effect.
Remember with a layer mask, white reveals and black conceals I'm going to use my
Wacom tablet with pressure sensitivity but you can use the mouse if you like and all
I have to do now is paint with white on that layer mask to reveal that effect.
Earlier I set this to a hard brush so I
can reduce the hardness to zero and paint the effect in, like so.
I'm going quickly here but obviously in
your project spend a little more time fine-tuning the smaller details.
And this is what my result looks like when
I painted everything in this is the before and the after.
As you can see it looks very similar to the skin tones from this image.
I do want to mention that this technique
doesn't work well if you want to make extreme adjustments.
For example, if I wanted to make your skin
blue this probably wouldn't be the best technique but to make shift in skin tones
like the one in this example it works great.
By the way, if you want to learn a
fantastic skin-softening technique then check out this video.
Thanks so much for watching.