How to make skin pale (and still realistic) in Photoshop

Another week, another quick tutorial. This week I am going to show you how to turn skin pale in Photoshop. The image I will be using to showcase this is one of my older edits. It is a dark art image, but this effect could be used the same on any image, for example a fashion image. This is a trick I learnt a few years ago from watching Calvin Hollywood’s tutorial dvd Calvinize. Be sure to check his work out as it is awesome! In this tutorial I will be using different percentages of opacity, but it is the same technique.

So, on with the tutorial. Make sure you have done any skin retouching needed first. Next create 3 channel mixer adjustment layers.

Now on each channel mixer adjustment layer click the monochrome box.

Once that is done. Click on the bottom channel mixer layer. Leave its blend mode on normal, but lower the opacity to 35%.

Select the middel Channel mixer layer, and change the blend mode to screen. Lower the opacity of the layer to 40%.

Now make sure the top channel mixer layer is selected and change the blend mode to soft light. Lower the opacity to 50%. Your whole image will probably now look white and pale but don’t worry!

Select all your channel mixer layers by holding down shift, right click, and select group from layers. Name the group pale skin. Then add a layer mask. Hold down CTRL and press I to invert the mask. Your pale skin will now be hidden. All you have to do, is selectively paint it back on your image where you want it.

And there you have it, pale skin for whatever genre of image you are creating.

Feel free to play with the opacity sliders to strengthen or weaken the effect. Every image is different, so a little tweaking may be needed. Thanks guys, and happy editing!