Free Photoshop Tutorial - At Face Value

In this free Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to colour correct facial skin values in CYMK, by the numbers.



In the toolbox, choose the Color Sampler Tool and put its sample size to 5 by 5 average. Shift left-click on a couple of non-reflective facial areas. Between the eyebrows just below the shiny part of the forehead is a good spot (#1). The top of the cheek is another (#2). Try not to select a dark area or heavily saturated spot. Basically, you're making a safe judgment call. Your selections will register in the info palette (see below).

The following examples in this free Photoshop tutorial will show varying degrees of colour change. Firstly, duplicate your layer. We will make the colour changes to the bottom layer. Bring up Curves. In this example, we want to 'bump up' the colour of her skin. The colour samples attest to this (1-11-21 and 1-18-32) with Cyan being a bit low. At least the samples are heading in the correct direction with respect to the ratio.

Let's try a couple of variations of the Cyan channel by increasing the values to 10 and 7. We do these through Curves and left-clicking on the bottom left corner (see red circle) and dragging it up or to the right depending on the relationship to the original sample values. You can see the changes in the Info palette as you drag - to the right of the original values (see below).

Click here to return to the start of the free Photoshop tutorial section.