How to reduce freckles in a picture using Photoshop

It is in my opinion, as a “freckleface”, that my specks are a part of me. For better or worse, they are one of my unique features that make me who I am. However, there are times where I would love to see myself without them, or to lighten the appearance of the freckles in a photograph. This tutorial will walk you through the steps of one of the methods of reducing the appearance of freckles from a digital photograph using Photoshop. You need only the most basic experience in Photoshop to do this tutorial, if even that, as I will walk you through step by step.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A digital image with freckles
• Photoshop

1. Open Photoshop and open your picture by going to File->Open-> and browsing for the file. Once found, either double click it or click it once and click the “Open” button. If the picture is not maximized, do so by clicking the single square in the upper right corner of the picture (not of Photoshop’s upper right corner).

2. 
    

   Make sure you have a few fundamental tools open in your work space. You should have, at minimum, your history window open and your layers window open. See picture to the left for an example of how I keep my workspace for this project.

3. We will use some keyboard shortcuts to do the next few steps, as they make it faster and easier. First, save this file as a new picture, in case you want to keep the original or make a mistake and need to go back to the original copy. To do this, on your keyboard, press the ctrl, shift, and s button all at the same time (Or File->Save As). Decide on a unique name for this picture (I usually do the same file name and add freckles at the end) and click save.

4. Now that we have a fresh copy of the picture, press ctrl and J on the keyboard to create a new layer of the full picture. On this picture, we will change a few things. First, on the toolbar, click on Image->Mode->CMYK Color. This will change the color scheme from RGB to CMYK, giving us a Y color channel that we will use next. If it asks you to flatten the image, do NOT do this.

5. 
    

   On the Layers docked window (lower right window in my screenshot from step 1), click on the tab that says Layers/Channels/Paths. You want to click on the tab that says “Channels”. This will have 5 different sections (CMYK/Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black). Click on the one that says Yellow. Make sure it is the only one that is highlighted, this is very important. This is the color channel that will show the freckles the most, so we need this one. With only the yellow one selected, press ctrl and A on the keyboard to select the entire picture shown. Now press Ctrl and C to copy the yellow channel (which is supposed to be black and white, no worries).

6. 
    

   Now we need to revert the picture back to the RGB color Mode. The best way to do this to preserve original colors is to go to your history window and click on the item above CMYK Color. This will take away everything done after that point (just before the transformation to CMYK), but your copy will still be on the clipboard.

7. Now on that layers section, we want to have a new layer of the yellow copy that we just made. To do this, click on the bottom of this docked window, second icon from the right (looks like a post it note with one corner folded up). You can also click on the toolbar Layer-> New->Layer. Now press Ctrl and V on your keyboard. This will paste that black and white picture on top of the other picture.

8. 
    

   First, press ctrl and I on the keyboard to invert the new pasted layer. In the layer’s window, we want to lower the opacity of the new picture a whole lot. In the top right of the layer window, you’ll see a “Opacity” section with a box next to it that should say 100%. Click on the little arrow next to the 100% and slide the knob down anywhere between 6 and 30 %, whatever looks best to you. Warning… if you leave it up around 20 or 30, the picture will looked grayed a bit. This may look okay to you, but if it doesn’t, you’ll have to lower the opacity of the yellow channel layer.

9. 
    

   The last step is for removing the darker freckles, if you so desire. To do this, we are going to use the Spot Healing Brush Tool. On the tool pallet on the left, it is the 4th button on the left from the top. It looks like a band-aid with dotted lines to the left of it (as if it was covering a square of dashed lines, only the top and left visible). If the correct tool isn’t selected, if you don’t see the band-aid, right click on the far left, fourth from the top button and select Spot Healing Brush Tool.

10. Now, we need to size the brush to be the correct size per freckle we are covering up. You can do this on the toolbar on the top, but I have found the easiest way is by keyboard shortcut. Put the brush over the freckle to cover, and make the brush the closest size to it by pressing [ to make the brush smaller, and ] to make the brush larger. The brush must cover the freckle entirely, but not be much bigger than it. When you have the correct size brush, click once on the freckle. Some will come out distorted, and if this is the case, make the brush smaller and try again. Do this for the remaining dark freckles.

11. Poof, you’re done! I will have new articles up soon for additional photo touchups, so check back with me often. Some of the upcoming articles will include tooth whitening, eye lightening and color changing, and color correction (which will use this finished photograph as the example)

Tips & Warnings

• This is a great means for correcting freckles as well as age/liver spots. Take your time and play with the settings until you are happy with the results.
• Seem my articles on selecting one subject from a picture, and use this technique on one person from a group photograph!
• Go slow. If you rush, you'll end up with errors that may be hard to correct.
• ALWAYS make a copy of the original picture. You don't want to ruin a great memory by messing up the photograph and not being able to get the original again!