How do I fix this?

[Asmodeus]

Was waiting for the girlfriend to finish getting her nails done and decided to shoot her hands while they were being worked on. I wanted to get a shot the contrasted the wet red nail polish with the rich blue of the Tanzanite ring. I decided to use my Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro, (though it isn't a macro shot) and got a bit more than I expected. Problem is, I've got too much skin detail and it makes her hands look pretty beat; they aren't that way in reality. I guess I want to soften the hand without touching the ring or mails.

The shot is a crop, otherwise unretouched.

http://www.supercharger.net/pictures/ring.jpg

[Lotto]

Selective coloring?

[Asmodeus]

Selective coloring?

Thanks. I hadn't thought of that.

[CyberPet]

I had another take on it... soften the skin a bit and made the mans arm a bit more blurry. Even made a "ding" to the diamond on the ring.... ok, I went overboard. Cropped the image too.

http://the-halls.se/edited/hand.jpg

[Mernya]

I'd use about two new layers and use channel masks to let various levels of blur through.

[RAitch]

You can also create a gaussian blur layer with minor settings and use masks to control where the softening takes place. Instead of the blur, of course you can use soften. That way, you can keep some of the detail around the knuckles while losing the gator skin.

Also, to increase the colour contrast, check out the selective colour adjustment layer. You should be able to make those colours *POP*!

Personally, the image looks a little blurry (shutter speed??) so you might have to apply some sharpenning after to help with that.