Tan Skin Tone

October 30th, 2006 Filed in: Tricks & Tips Jump to comments

Someone emailed me and asked how to make the golden/tan skin tone as seen in many movie posters and magazine advertisements. Believe it or not, the effect can be achieved by just couple mouse clicks. Here is a quick Photoshop tutorial to show you how to make a tan skin tone effect and apply makeups on the model. Let’s take a look at the image below, the left image is original photo and the right is final image.

Before & After

compare image

1. Overlay Layer

Open the original document that you want to apply the effect. Go to Layer > Duplicate Layer (or press Cmd + J) to duplicate the original layer. Set the duplicated layer Blending mode to Overlay. Then adjust the Opacity to 70%. The Opacity may be vary, depend on the brightness and color of your original photo source.

step 1

2. Highlight Spots

Select the original layer. Choose the Brush tool, set brush Size = 200px, Mode = Color Dodge and Opacity = 10%. Use the Eyedropper tool to pick a sample skin color from the image (Option+Click on the image). Gently brush on the areas that you want to be shine.

step 2

3. Eyeshadow

Make a selection around the eyelid, go to Selection > Feather (Cmd+Option+D) to feather the selection by 5px. Make a new layer and fill the selection with a light pink color. Then set the blending mode to Hue.

step 3

Make another selection slightly smaller than the pink layer. Again, feather it by 5px. Fill it with a blue purple color and set the blending mode to Darken.

step 3b

4. Eyeliner

Make a selection of the eyeliner. Feather it by 3px. Make a new layer. Use the Gradient tool (pick a green color, select Foreground to Transparent), then drag from the lower corner to the upper corner of the selection. Adjust the blending mode to Multiply.

step 4

Final

Use the same technique to finish off the left eye. You may also use this technique to apply the color of the lip, blush, etc.

final image

venkateswara Rao

# 78

December 21st, 2007 at 1:24 am

hi.. cool man.. tats great effect.. b4 i used autoFX for the same.keep it up!

Srihari Raju

# 77

December 19th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

Nice and very simple tutorial! Thanks for sharing your skills.

kgs

# 76

October 13th, 2007 at 8:45 am

I don’t know how the original edited pic looks. But the finished one in the website is disgusting with burned out highlights and all that !

Sonam Mehta

# 75

October 5th, 2007 at 5:28 am

i knew the effect but never knew can use this way !!!
its really great to know this!!
thanks so much:)

Griffin

# 74

July 31st, 2007 at 2:49 am

Great tutorial! For the skin tone, I usually use the Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Photo Effects, then use a custom colour for the adjustment. Play with the colours and intensity — it’s really fun and you can get some great effects. The highlighting is also a key element :)