One Tricky Photo...

[timelesstreasuresphotog]

Hi! I've been lurking for awhile, and have decided to come out of the shadows to ask for your expertise. I did a photo shoot for a local soccer team. One photo has been VERY tricky. The subject is very fair skinned, and the coach insisted that photos be taken AFTER practice...hence the pinkish tint. I gave mom several choices, and she chose this one...I've played with it in CS3, Lightroom, AND Elements for a couple of days, and just can't seem to get a natural looking skin tone. Any ideas?

[autofocus]

you can try burning in her face a little providing there is some detail left in the high lights...looks a little blown out which is very hard to recover. Did you shoot RAW? Shadow Highlight tool may also help. I suspect the camera saw all that black in the image and metered off of that which over exposed her face. Good luck

[timelesstreasuresphotog]

Yes, I always shoot RAW (I've saved many an image in RAW)...I've tried burning her face, this is the resulting image after 2 days of tweaking. In person she's a VERY fair skinned girl, and this is actually 95% close to her actual tones....but I'd like to add a bit more...it's screaming "unfinished".

[genielamb]

There is quite a lot you can do to remove the red cast on her skin. An easy and simple method is to use your lasso tool to select her face and arms. You do not have to be 100% accurate as you are only going to alter the red hue. A slight feather may make it look more natural. Once you have her 'skin' selected go to you hue/saturation adjustment, make sure red is selected and simply change the hue to taste. I slid the bar ever so slightly to the right, adjusted the saturation and this was the result. Obviously working from the RAW file and a much higher resolution you will produce a better result.

[ocnsprt]

I dont really see a problem with her skin tone, it looks like she is a lovely fair skinned girl, the pink looks very natural and is not distracting from the shot so Id personally leave it as is. I did try to reduce it a bit and give her a warmer skin tone, it probly isnt very natural looking but I will post so you can be the judge. Here it is, hope it helps.

[timelesstreasuresphotog]

Thanks...I'm trying what you've suggested....will post my ending result...again, thanks for your input!!