How to remove freckles?

Any suggestions on how to remove freckles without using the healing brush or clone stamp. The kind of freckles I'm refering to are very small and light freckles, bordering on a skin pigment difference. I tried to follow the following tutorial with unsatisfactory results. There has to be a way to get the freckled skin the same tone as the surrounding skin without lightening both the freckles and the surrounding skin

http://photoshoptutori​als.ws …hing/remove-freckles.html

Here is the image I'm trying to fix. Note to moderator: I downloaded this iimage from a site I have paid a subscription for the priviledge of editing. I'm assuming it's ok to post it here. Let me know if not. I cropped out the face.

Also, I don't want to blur the skin, just remove the darker spottled pigmentation. And I don't want to lighten the skin between the freckles. I was able to successfully remove the redness from the skin, but now the opacity needs evened out.

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With a cheese grater. Don't forget to factor in recovery time.

Generally if someone has freckles you shouldn't remove them without asking them first. Especially if you use the cheese grater method. Doing it in photoshop i'd use the standard spot removal tools.

Hasty demo of concept, on her left arm...

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I'm not liking the blur effect. There seems to be a hypocrisy with Photoshop. When I wanted to remove the redness in the skin all I had to do wash create a new layer, switch to HUE blend mode, eyedrop sample the good skin, and Whala.

But if I want to change the opacity (the pigmented spots), the only technique I can find is one that requires bluring the skin, which makes it look fake.

Here's my theory of how Photoshop should do it. Maybe I'm naive but...

Step one: I eyedrop sample a freckle
Step two: I eyedrop the good skin
Step three: I do some sort of blend mode or whatever to tell PS to make sample one the same as sample two. I may may want to slide the opacity bar so as not to remove the freckles completely. What should happen is that the freckles would lighten but the surrounding skin would stay the same.

I tried this technique but all it did was lighten the good skin and left the freckles untouched... http://www.free-photoshop-video-tutorials.com …ines-from-your-photos.asp

I have no experience with skin and don't know if there's a way to completely get rid of all the freckles, but how about reducing them a bit, would that do? I took the image, selected the skin, painted in the skin colour (just sampled a spot that looked right), chose luminosity as blend mode, reduced opacity to 50%, used a mask to reduce the effect where it was possible and came up with this. A quick and dirty job mind you. Could be that it completely sucks though...

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Paint Shop Pro X2...Skin Smoothing set to 50, then Makeover Tool Blemish Fixer to get rid of the bolder freckles...

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Wow, Ed, those look just great. My effort absolutely does suck in comparison!

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #13219355
Wow, Ed, those look just great. My effort absolutely does suck in comparison!

Never say "suck" unless you're drinking a milkshake. I've found in photography that there's really no such thing as "suck", unless there is a true lack of technical skill or artistic impression. To me it all boils down to experience, and if you don't spend time diddling around with people's skin then you might not have the best editing skills for skin. It's not because you "suck", it's because you don't have the experience.


Huge difference between "suck" and experience.

Well, you have a point there in that no, I have no experience whatsoever with people's skin (I'm a bird photographer). But it is exactly because this is the case that my effort sucks!

I would suggest staying out of the sun......

If you want to remove them, clone them out. I'd suggest reading up on frequency separation: https://photography-on-the.net …p?p=10859189#po​st10859189

http://abduzeedo.com/p​erfect-lie-photoshop-2

Thanx ill give those techniques a try. Btw, I found this blog that says the only way to professionally retouch skin is by painstakingly dodging and burning every pixel which can take hours per face.

http://www.dmd-digital-retouching.com …stakes-how-to-avoid-them/


I don't doubt what he says since his portfolio is impressive, but I want to STRESS again my utter confusion why there is no plug in that automates his technique. Am I to believe that thousands of fashion photographers sit at their computer all day dodging pixels at 200% Zoom? The science of blending pixel tonality should not be quantum physics. Why no entrepreneur has not programmed a tool for this leaves me scratching my head.

I guess I'll have to wait for CS10.

Hey, well you have to poney up and pay those software geeks!

Nik has a nice variety of tools! for a price...

Why would you want to get rid of freckles? Personally,I prefer to look at natural looking people not a photoshopped unreal version.

The kind of freckles I'm refering to is freckles combined with sun damaged skin. The freckles are so small that the skin takes on a hyperpigmented look. Freckles are easy to remove with a healing brush. The image i posted is probably not high res enough to show the difference but there is a difference and so the traditional healing brush technique is just not useful.