SELECT JUST SKIN TONES and adjust only the faces

Portrait retouchers spend a lot time working on faces, improving color and tone, hiding blemishes, enhancing eyes, and more. Yet even everyday snapshots of people can be greatly improved by editing the faces in the image. For example, a Levels adjustment on just the faces can bring the attention of the viewer to the subjects in the image and make an everyday snapshot much more interesting. However, making a selection of just the faces in a photo can be difficult or time consuming.

Photoshop CS6 includes a new tool for limiting a selection to the skin tones in a photograph. When you choose Select Color Range, Photoshop automatically selects what it sees as skins tones. You can further refine the automatic selection by checking the Detect Faces check box, which appears when the Skin Tones color range menu is open. 

You can use this new tool as a starting point and then refine the facial selection with the other selection tools to quickly get a more defined selection. 

Note: Photograph copyright © Photospin.com. 

1 Open a photograph showing a face or faces. 

2 Click Select. 

3 Click Color Range. 

The Color Range dialog box appears.

4 Click the Select drop-down menu and click Skin Tones. 

5 Click Detect Faces ( changes to ). 

6 Click the Selection Preview dropdown menu. 

7 Click White Matte. 

Note: You can select any preview color that makes viewing the selected areas easier. 

Note: Move the Color Range dialog box so you can see more of the photo. 

The skin tones appear in color in the image window. Everything else turns white. 

8 Click and drag the Fuzziness slider all the way to the left. 

The image turns completely white and the preview box completely black. 

9 Click and drag the Fuzziness slider slowly to the right. 

The selected area expands. 

10 Click OK when most of the faces are selected. 

TIPS 

Did You Know? 

You can change the fuzziness by moving the slider or typing a specific number. The fastest way is to start by dragging the slider completely to the left. Then with 0 highlighted in the box, click the up arrow on your keyboard while viewing the changes in the main window. 

Try This! 

Depending on the colors in the photo, you may want to change the Selection Preview color to any of the other options in the menu. None shows the photo. Grayscale makes the selected areas white and the deselected areas black. Black Matte shows the skin tones in the selected areas with everything else in black. White Matte does the opposite, and Quick Mask displays the image as it will appear in Quick Mask Mode.