Dealing with freckles

<p>Any tips on dealing with freckles? I'm working on some images and the subject has lots of freckles. One school of though says "just leave them in there", but in this case I'd like to minimize them.</p>

<p>I tried conversion to B&W and selecting the red channel, but they're still pretty prominant. I can reduce them somewhat using a edge preserving smooth, but eventually the subject just looks "plastic". Cloning them out would take a week and probably wouldn't be possible (too many, too close together).</p>

<p>Any other ideas (besides makeup <em>before</em> taking the picture!).</p>

<p>Can we see one?</p>

<p>What about roughly selecting the facial area, then going to Select | Color Range, and adjust the slider until it highlights just the freckles. Then reducing the saturation or brightness of the selected area.</p>

<p>Did you try the blue channel? I thought that was the one to tweak to impact freckles. Of course that still leaves you with a b/w image.</p>

<p>I tend to like freckles in b/w, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask anyway...</p>

<p>First step is to select the freckles, and that's best done by duping the Blue or Green channel and ramping up the contrast until they stick out like sore thumbs. Then select them with the Magic Wand or Color Range, removing everything that is not a freckle with the Lasso. You might want to expand that selection a pixel or two, or feather it a bit. Save your selection.<br>

Next step is to fill that selection with unfreckle. You can dupe the original image, blur it to smithereens, load your freckle selection, and ctl-alt-J the now-unfreckled area to a new layer. Composite that unfreckles-only layer on your original with Overlay or Lighten, whatever looks good, and fade it a little with the transparency slider.<br>

You could probably move your selection down just a touch and make a new layer from the skin below the freckles, then move that layer back over the freckles in a similar way. You might have to do it again, going sideways or up, until you've reduced the freckle population satisfactorily.<br>

Lots of ways to do stuff in Photoshop. Next time, caution your subject to stop standing behind gassy cows.</p>

<p>My personal opinion is to leave them. thats is who the person and it adds character.<br>

Of course I am bias as my wife has millions of freckles for which my 2 year old daughter pointed at them one day and said "spots" boy did we all laugh the house down</p>

<p>Depends on how tight the shot is, but selecting the area and using a dust/scratch filter may work. If they are small, it will get rid of them and look fairly clean. You then may want to apply a 0.5 radius gaussian blur to down play them further-- this assumes you are not selecting anything that needs to be sharp, like the eyes and places on the nose.</p>

<p>Freckles are so beautiful and rare.</p>

<p>But since you want to minimize this is a quick way i use.</p>

<p>duplicate layer.<br>

apply gaussian blur to background layer<br>

bring up the history pallete<br>

click duplicate layer state in history to bring it back to what it looked like before you applied blur.<br>

click the first column next to gaussian blue (in the history pallete)<br>

choose history brush from the tool pallete<br>

change the hbrush to lighten</p>

<p>hope that helps</p>

<p>as a person with freckles - I say leave them...</p>

<p>I have recently photographed a model with prominent birth marks. She talks about them openly and, although many photographers blend them out, we decided to work with them. The images of Jasmin are the first 12 in my Abstract Nudes folder. There are also a few in my Glamour Nudes area. She was interested in this and has indicated she liked the result. I feel that this is a big part of what makes her unique.<br>

I think to keep them in or not is something that needs to be between the model and photographer and depends on the ultimate use of the images. I guess if I was photographing her for a beauty use I'd also try to minimize the birth marks.</p>

<p>Bob, heres the easiest and fastest way to minimize anything...ready?</p>

<p>drum roll...................</p>

<p>Selective Color. No need for duplicating, converting, praying, voodoo dancing...just the old selective color. I assume the kid have redish frekle, so by using a adjustment layer selective color go into the rd color, drop the black, add or remove some yellow etc...and the frekle should magicaly reduce in appereance. In case of the setting also touch too much the skin, add a mask and quickly brush them away..I think its a matter of second.</p>

<p>Let us know how it work, i know it work for me for years..but i like to hear someone else joy : )</p>

<p>Unless the customer asks you to remove them, don't. The subject may actually like themself with freckles.<br>

It's not the photographers place to force their vision of good looks on the client. Just my opinion, others may disagree.</p>

<p>Jim Marby</p>

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