How to Adjust Skin Tone in a Digital Photo

Increase the "warmth" of the image to improve skin tone.

Photos are often more than what meets the eye. The advent of digital photography has made it easier to retouch, manipulate and edit photos after they're taken. This can be used to great effect when the lighting or color of a photo doesn't come out right, or when the photographer wants to revise the image he first saw in his display screen or viewfinder. You can adjust skin tone to improve the appearance of portraits.

Instructions

1. Adjust color saturation. Zero saturation will turn a photo black and white; full saturation fills it with gaudy, unnatural color. The ideal balance is somewhere in between, but typically, reducing the saturation slightly will bring out more natural-looking skin tones.

2. Lower magenta values in the color editor, if your photo software allows you to manipulate individual colors. Photos with high magenta value will make skin tone look unattractively reddish.

3. Use the "color blend" feature of your editing software by highlighting a problematic area, selecting a good skin tone with the eyedropper tool, and filling in the problem area to match the selected tone.

4. Increase the "warmth" setting of a photo. Warmer photos make the skin look healthier and imbue it with color.

References

• Beyond Digital Photography; Cher Threinen-Pendarvis; 2009