Cleaning up jaundice

[KUlmer]

I did a lovely newborn shoot this week, but the baby was still quite a bit jaundiced and was covered with red pimples. I was able to take care of all the skin and everything looked good, but I just couldn't clean up the jaundice without throwing off the coloring enough to look unnatural. Any suggestions?

[Photologyst]

Post the original.

Isolate the baby from the rest of the photo in a layer or use a portrait program.

[Ari77]

I have just been going through the same problem!

Only fix I really found was to use the 'colour picker' on one of the worst bits, which came up as orange, and desaturated that till it looked ok, then added more saturation to the red channel. Then a levels adjust on the blue channel to get rid of the last of the yellow, and on the green channel to add a touch of magenta. And up the middle slider on the luminescence channel, which blasted some of the imperfections out. And the skin colour looked ok - but pretty flat.

But then, I went to do a levels adjust to 'pop' the image and it screwed it all completely! So I can get the skin tone right, but can't pop the image!

Hope my info helps, maybe someone has a better fix? Please!!!!!!! Jaundice is not uncommon and is a problem!

Cheers - Ari

[KUlmer]

Ari77: I did something similar. First, I had to clean up a bunch of newborn acne and red spots in Photoshop. Then, I selected the Yellow 2 layer and desaturated it. Next, I ran it through my portrait action. Baby's hands were purplish to begin with. By the end, It wasn't as noticeable, but if I tried to get rid of the jaundice totally then the colors in the hands and the rest of the shot went out. Fortunately, it was my niece and the end results were only a little yellow, but very natural looking.

Photologyst: I did try duplicating the main image layer, isolating the baby and then adjusted the coloring. The problem was that no matter what I did, to completely get rid of the jaundice made the rest of the layer stick out like a sore thumb against the normal coloring throughout the rest of the image.

Thanks folks! And here's to hoping that someone knows more than me.