I have seen and heard lots of people using things like portraiture on newborn skin lately. Sure, it’s quick and easy, but you lose so much texture and the baby ends up looking like a little plastic doll! So I thought I’d share how I edit newborn skin and clear up some of those little rashes without that smooth plastic look. At first this method takes a bit of time but with a little practise it gets easier and you’ll find you get quite quick at it. It’s no doubt one of many ways but this is what I do.
These are 100% crops of a quick – 1 minute tops – edit, it took me much, MUCH longer to put this together than it did to re-edit the image after I accidently saved over the full sized image with a web version (oops!)
You could take it further, remove some more blotchiness from the chest etc, but I like to keep it as natural as possible by just removing a few of the more distracting blemishes that draw attention away from her gorgeous little self.
1. If you’re not shooting in RAW – start. You have so much more control over your image if you do. I generally do more than 90% of my editing in Camera Raw and it saves SO much time.
2. Keeping the room nice and warm and covering the baby with a blanket between shots makes newborn skin less blotchy and easier to deal with. I don’t edit out little milk spots or birth marks, those are just a part of who they are at this point in time. The redder rashes and scratches can be quite distracting and often look more pronounced in photos so that is when I will use this method to reduce the appearance of the rash (not always completely get rid of it but make the image more about the baby).
3. This beautiful little girl had quite red and rashy skin. I knew I wanted a fairly light and airy image but I underexposed slightly from where I wanted to be so I could adjust the red channel more easily without it becoming blown (sometimes, if the redness is not to bad I can avoid all this work by bumping the exposure a little in camera but not this time). I opened the image in ACR (The RAW file processor available with Photoshop) and went to the HSL tab then the Luminance tab within that (see below). I increased the luminance of the red channel slightly to make the rash less pronounced. During this step you need to keep a close eye on the image to make sure the skin is not losing detail and the colour still looks right, if it starts looking patchy back it off a bit. When I was happy that I hadn’t gone to far but the rash was looking less red I went to the basics tab (see below) and bumped the exposure up a little (again being careful not to blow the red channel – keep an eye on the histogram and the image to be sure it’s not looking patchy.
4. When I was happy with the colour and exposure I opened the image in Photoshop and used the healing brush tool to remove the blemishes that were still quite obvious and distracting. I always use the healing brush instead of spot healing – with the healing brush you choose where the sampled colour/texture are coming from by holding down the alt key and clicking on an area of skin similar in colour. If you use the spot healing brush you can find that you’re getting hair and clothing textures in skin and vice versa, it’s better to be take the extra step and have the control.
Use a smallish (not much bigger than the blemish) and soft brush for healing. If there is a definite edge to the result check the brush settings and make sure the hardness is set to 0%. If something looks too smooth or overdone you can fade the effect, under the edit tab (but only one click at a time so take it slowly at first until you’re used to it or edit a duplicate layer so you can lower the opacity of the whole layer or use a layer mask).
The patch tool is great for larger flatter areas but you have to be careful not to go too big. If it starts to look blotchy try doing it in smaller sections or using the healing brush instead and you almost always need to lower the opacity of your patch so it blends better and looks more natural (before you deselect the patch selection go to edit – fade the patch selection and lower the opacity until it looks right).
It sounds time consuming when you think about all those little spots that you’re dealing with individually but it really doesn’t take long once you’re used to it and the baby is left looking a whole lot more like themselves than in images processed in things like portraiture that blur/soften all of the skin and lose the texture.
If you have anything to add, a question or think something I’ve said is incorrect, let me know in the comments and I’ll get back to you. Hope this helps someone.
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