Help improve portrait skin for rosacea
Answered
My family has rosacea. It's in the genes. So many of our photos have too-visible red cheeks and some foreheads. And, our men have very prominent capillaries (telangectasia).
I'm looking for ideas on softening how those skin conditions appear in edited images. I've been struggling with existing tools (my skills). I can blur, and I can color-replace, but my results look fake/crude. Color Enhance to shift away from red/magenta has been ugly.
Have others on this forum found ways to overcome the reality of such skin, and make pleasing realistic alternative images?
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Are you using the Portrait AI module? It has controls to help with some of that kind of retouching.
Here are links to video tutorials on using Portrait. Some of them are for Plus members but most are available to everyone.
https://www.on1.com/videos/?fwp_video_library_categories=portrait
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I have viewed the tutorial videos on using Portrait AI, but I have been unsuccessful for my situation. The 'perfect skin' the tool can achieve when handling 'blemishes' or 'smoothing' looks plastic, even with 'texture' at max. And facial hair becomes blurred, unless I go back and carefully mask that out. The general redness of Rosacea isn't handled by Portrait AI at all. I've tried following up with Effects, Color Enhancment, and playing with color range and masking to just the face. It's still a struggle.
I've tried Effects > Skin Retouching, and applying with mask to only the troubled skin. That does better than Portrait AI, but I still struggle. There isn't an effective slider to handle the change I want for the redness of the skin.
Another thing I've played with is Local Adjustment > Paint with Color, with the blend mode: color, and a low opacity. Green is opposite of red. It takes guessing and playing around to get a reasonable amount of effect.
I have been able to improve my image, but it's so much effort. I would like for easier handling of the patchy, irregular redness of Rosacea. I imagine there are also many people with redness in their face from being out in the cold, or exertion, or embarrassment.
Attached is my best original and adjusted result so far.
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I would try something like the the Channel Mixer or Color Balance which gives you greater control over the mixing of the different channels to achieve the colors you want. With these controls you can mix the color channels as needed to remove color casts that the Color Enhancer has a hard time with. It does take some practice to get the hang of how they work. Curves can also be used once you get the hang of them.
In conjunction with this, both green and red are primary colors, they cannot be opposites. The opposite of red is cyan, which is blue and green. This could be why you're having problems getting the colors right. Adding green only would miss out on the blue component. The opposite of RGB is CMY.
Another thing to remember is that removing a color channel, red in this case, will darken the image as there is less light now. Adding cyan will achieve the same affect on the color balance but it will brighten the image as you are adding more light to 2 channels. You might need to use one of the color Blending Modes if the change in brightness is too great. This is where Curves can be useful as they are a direct control over that relationship.
Other than that, we'll have to wait to see if anyone with actual portrait retouching experience can offer more suggestions. This isn't my area of expertise but I have used it successfully to remove color blotches of lens flare from photos by finding the right color settings then painting a mask with a low opacity brush to blend it with the surrounding area.
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I normally use the colour adjustment filter, move the red hue to orange and play with the sliders until it's minimised. If needed then mask it in and repeat, you should be able to get it to a level where skin smoothing will cope with the rest of it.
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Thanks, Brian and John. I appreciate your advice.
I didn't feel 'up to the challenge' of the channel approach and specific curbes. Although in my earlier comment I mentioned adding a color layer, and blend modes, I was reluctant to dive in deeper into those technical areas.
I played some more with Effects: Skin Retouching, and Color Adjustments, and also Glow (with mode lighten). With Skin I had to think more about what the Blemishes, Smoothing and Evenness really target. I also had to play with the Color Adjustments, getting the right range, shifting the Hue a pleasing amount, and also some brightness. I had to go with a few Color Adjustments, as changes with one color-range was over doing it. For patches under my eyes the Glow (just brushed on specific areas) helped diminish those.
I'm pleased with my overall result. I know it's an image, and I can't get my real skin to behave that way, but I like the look.
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That's a nice improvement.
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