Edit multiple skin tones in one photograph with ease!
As nice as it would be to be able to edit a photograph of a family or a couple in one click, that’s not always the case. Sometimes you have to adjust photographs due to the lighting and even because of the differing undertones in a photograph. What happens when you have someone with a cool undertone and another person with a warm undertone in the same photograph, but you like the edits except one of your subjects look grey? I’ve had photographs taken of me before where I look greyish while my husband looks more flattering. This is not a slight against that photographer, but to acknowledge that it can be a challenge because everyone’s skin tone and undertones are so unique.
For example, when editing this photograph from one of the stock photography websites where you can get RAW images, there are different skin tones and undertones in the photograph. When editing, I noticed that the person in the back looked very bright after I added the preset and I wanted to enhance their skin tone without washing them out. I wanted the background of the photograph to have a lesser white balance while not changing the composition of everything else in the photograph. I used the steps that I am going to share with you today, which allowed me to edit just them without messing up the entire photograph. You can see the improvements I made on the right by looking at the individual with the green sneakers, who I spot-edited.
As you can see, spot-editing is a tool that is a MUST when trying to figure out how to do so and can help a lot to navigate this. Here’s how you can do so in Adobe Lightroom CC.
HOW TO SPOT EDIT IN ADOBE LIGHTROOM CC
- Open the photograph of your choice.
- At the top toolbar, go to the “view” tab.
- One there, go down to the “Edit Tools” option and select “Brush”
- Decide the size you’d like the brush to be. If a portrait, I’d go larger, but edit it according to the space you are trying to edit.
- Once there, click on the brush tool and using your arrow click on where you would like to edit the photograph. For example, if editing the color on someone’s face, you want to click on the center of their face.
- If you need to edit more than one part of their body, go to the toolbar on the right and click the plus sign to add another one. You should see a blue dot on the spots where you’ve added it and you should see the area you selected in red when you hover over it.
- When you click on each dot, you should be able to edit everything from the temperature to the hues for that particular section.
I hope that this post was helpful, but feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
