help with baby skin

[carrbowl]

ugh...I printed this baby print and very unhappy with the results. I swear I saw a thread about how to make the skin tone more even on a baby somewhere on here, but of course now I can't find it

They are getting one print in black and white which makes it easier to edit, but then we have the color....which to me makes it harder. Suggestions please

as usual the sharpness has disappeared..please ignore this issue.

[Bob_S]

Portraiture does a decent job on that one. Coffeshop blog's actions should work well too. The CoffeeShop Blog: CoffeeShop Actions and Presets!

[T. Adam Martin]

Renae:

The WB looks off on my display. It's got a strong green cast on it. Here's my recommendations for the image:

[1] White balance using a true shadows, highlights and midtones curves adjustment;
[2] Dual process the image to raise the baby by about 2/3 a stop and the blanket by 1/3 stop (Raising the baby's exposure will help eliminate some of the wrinkles and darkness in the tone)

After you've done these two things, I think the image is ready to start retouching.

[1] Duplicate the layer and run a surface blur (high settings)
[2] Mask the layer and reveal only the surface blurred baby
[3] Change the opacity of the layer to suit your texture desire

Fixing the tone:

[4] Create another layer via the surface blur layer (this will allow you to affect only the surface blur mask via a modified selection)
[5] Use the eyedropper to select the skin tone you want (a la pink baby);
[6] Select the paintbrush tool and set to 50%
[7] Start painted the baby (the adjustments will be slight due to the opacity changes you made to the surface blur and the 50% brush opacity)
[8] After you've completed painting, adjust the painted layer opacity to your preference (I tend to brush in a little heavy since I will be changing the opacity layer anyway).

My final recommendation is to create a layer of the flattened image, desaturate it and then mess with the blending modes and opacity layers to get the skin tone to the level you want.

This is the method to do everything in PS without any plugins. If you have Nik software, then this would be much faster between a mix of Color Efex and Viveza.

PS, if you want an example, I can produce an edited version according to my recommendations tonight for reference.

[JohnT]

Renae - This is just five minute in PS with Imagenomic Portraiture. It isn't perfect; just a quickie. If you don't have Portraiture or Portrait Professional, Tyler's method should work fine.

[carrbowl]

just checked...my settings must be wrong. When exporting from LR to CS5, the color changes. Crap...thus the green cast.

I did mess with noise ninja and portraiture..hopefully it will look better this time.

[venchka]

Shoot landscapes, flowers & rocks.