A One-Minute Tutorial on How to Quickly and Effectively Remove Red Skin in Photoshop

One of the most common things you'll deal with when it comes to portrait subjects is red skin. This super quick tutorial will show you a fast and effective way to get rid of it in Photoshop.

Coming to you from Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect, this great tutorial shows you how to quickly remove red skin using Photoshop using a hue/saturation adjustment. When you're selecting the red color, make sure the size of your selection area is bigger than point sample (such as 3 by 3 average), as this will give you a much more accurate result. Also, be very careful when making the adjustment, as your first instinct might be to simply decrease the saturation of the reds, but this typically leads to a rather unnatural result and can introduce strange gray spots on the skin. Notice how Dinda mostly uses the hue and lightness sliders to achieve the effect. Also, don't worry too much about being ultra-precise where you mask it in; just grab a soft brush, and as long as you avoid any areas that are red and that shouldn't be changed (like hair), broad strokes over the general area will do just fine.  

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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11 Comments

I could use some B-roll 😜

Short & efficient ! Perfect

this guy's killing it :) nice one!

Big fan of Unmesh Dinda tutorials never a waste of time.

Yes, this boy is really a fantastic teacher. I have used Photoshop from the first version (it was Photoshop 0.89 installed on the Mac plus if I remember well), but I am still learning something new with his videos.

Umesh is the best!!!!!

Oh, I like that. I'm no photoshop wizard at all, doing most work in LR. Occasionally you get some rosey-cheeked clients for portraits so this is handy, thanks.

I so wish all instructional videos were this concise. No need to waffle on for 12 min when 1 will do.
Thanks!

I've developed a habit; before I read most articles, I read the comments. More often than not, the comments will be a very good critique of the article just as they are in this case.

My kind of video! It's hands on and it has nothing to detract from its mission. Nicely done!

Totally agree — I do the same!

This procedure is quick and effective; simply amazing! I have tried many different techniques, but this one works the best. Thank you, Unmesh.