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Learn how to enhance flat lighting on tanned skin with Photoshop. This advance technique uses the red channel to enhance the highlights of the skin. Because this technique uses real data from the image instead of dodging and burning, this the final result is natural and real.

Enhance Lighting on Tanned Skin Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Open an image to edit. This photo effect only works on tanned skin tones with flat lighting.

Step 2

In the Layers pallet, click on the new adjustment layer button and in the menu that pops up, choose Channel Mixer.

Step 3

First, checkmark the Monochrome option at the bottom.

Then, change the settings to Red: 100%, Green: 0%, and Blue: 0% and click OK.

Here's what your image should look like; a beautiful black and white photo.

Step 4

You should now have a new layer called Channel Mixer. Click on the Channel Mixer layer then change the blending mode to Luminosity. This will make the Channel Mixer layer control the luminosity of the image and not the color.

Here is what happens when you change the blending mode to Luminosity. The colors stay the same but the luminosity changed. What we have now is a beautifully lit face and skin taken from the red channel. If you like the effect, you can stop here. But if you find the skin tone doesn't match who the actual model is, continue with the rest of the Photoshop tutorial.

Step 5

In the Layers palette, click on the New Adjustment Layer icon and choose Levels. What we will do now is darken back the image.

Move the middle input slider to 0.50. You can just type in 0.50 in the middle input field to do this. Click OK when done.

Here's what the image looks so far. The exposure is better, but the contrast is way too high.

Step 6

Hold the SHIFT key on your keyboard and click on the top two adjustment layers. This will select both adjustment layers. Press Ctrl+G or choose Layer > Group Layers to group the layers.

Step 7

Click on the group and reduce the opacity until you get the desired effect.

Here's what the image looks like.

The lighting of the skin looks more dynamic than before. As you can see, this Photoshop effect also affected the surroundings. In the next page, we'll add a layer mask to make this Photoshop effect only affect the skin.

Step 8

Select the group then choose Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All. You should now see back the original image because the mask hid the effect.

Step 9

Select the Brush tool from the tools palette. Before we start, make sure that your foreground and background colors are default by simply pressing D on your keyboard. This will make the foreground color black and the background color white.

Your cursor will change into a circle outline. You can right mouse click anywhere on the image to access the brush options to change the brush size and hardness. To start, click on one of the brush presets with the fuzzy circles.

Start painting on the skin areas. If your brush is too big or small, you can adjust the brush size by pressing [ or ] on your keyboard. To adjust the hardness of your brush, hold the shift key and press [ or ] on your keyboard.

Final Results