Lips are always too saturated in my PP

[jocelynaz]

How do you pp your portraits without affecting the colors of the lips? It seems whenever I pp a portrait shot, the person's lips gets saturated to the point that it looks like they have lipstick (when they actually don't). Afterwards, I then have to go back over the lips with the lasso tool and adjust the color as needed. I don't want to have to do an extra step for the lips if I don't have to.

Am I missing something in my post processing process? Or is this normal? Here are my basic pp steps:

- sharpen using unsharp mask
- adjust levels
- adjust curves
- increase contrast
- increase saturation
- add photo filter (if needed)
- final sharpen


Thank you!

[RoyL]

Would be nice to see an example of an image as it is hard to give advise without knowing what is wrong. Before and after would be better

[RexK_Cozumel]

I am going to assume that you are using photoshop for your editing. If so just add a layer mask and paint over the lips using a 10% black brush repeat as necessary till the lips look how you want them to.

Another tip if you are finding that your curves adjustment messes up the color of the skin is to set the curves adjustment to the blending mode illumination which will allow you to adjust the lighting of the photo with out affecting the color.

Just one more question.... is there a reason that you sharpen the image at the start and end of your workflow?

[jocelynaz]

Thanks RexK for the awesome tips!!! I think that's what I needed to know. I had never even heard about the illumination blend mode before (it's actually luminosity on CS2). I tried it and it helps a lot. I'm also going to try the mask tip you mentioned. Thank you, thank you!!

Btw...to answer your question about the final sharpen.... I pretty much followed a photographer's basic workflow, and she "defogged" (initial sharpen) and also did a final sharpen (using unsharp mask with 80/1/4 settings). Not sure exactly why she does it that way, but I like it. LOL. She's one of the first sites I learned about when I first started pp'g and a lot of her tips have stuck with me ever since. I can see a difference with that final sharpen in my photos, even though it's very slight. But I don't use it all the time - only if I think I need it. HTH!


RoyL - here's a before and after shot of a photo I just worked on this evening. The finished image looks great to me, except her lips look too red.

[RoyL]

RexK has answered the question. You can also use the History Brush Tool to go over the lips and bring back the original color if you like that.

I know I am a bloke but personally I like the deep red lips. Maybe somewhere between the two would be good.

Hope I can answer RexK question about sharpening. I also sharpen at the start and finish, sometimes I will sharpen 2 or 3 times depending on the image and detail.

The first sharpen is normally a fine edge sharpen, I use Nik Raw Presharpen for this but sometimes use UnSharpMask. Once I have finished working on the image I will apply the final sharpen, now sometimes this also means I will apply a very fine blur and then a very fine sharpen just to bring out that extra detail.

Most people will do just one sharpen and apply it heavily which will degrade the image. It is much better to do 3 fine edge sharpens than to do one broad sharpen. Lots of landscape and nature photographers work this way.

[oldwolf]

how about before you increase the saturation you lasso the lips then invert that selection so you are applying the saturation to everything but the lips?