Newbie Issue - How to use HSL slider to selct only skin and not blonde hair

[Dennis S]

Hi all, I'm pretty new to photo editing. I have been playing around with an old portrait where the subjects are light skinned with blonde hair. I want to use the HSL slider to increase the color of the skin, but it also affects the blond hair, which is very close to the skin color in this old photo, so it ends up turning the hair reddish. Any tips? Also, I would appreciate any tips at all on the overall editing I've done.

Donica_Brian.afphoto

[NotMyFault]

Welcome Dennis S.

nice image of beautiful people.

i come to a very different interpretation.

• use histogram and scope panel
• convert to RGB/16
• Reduce resolution to 1/2, image has been scanned in too high resolution for the level of available details
• levels adjustment, red channel, set gamma to 2.0
• curves adjustment, boost all color channels so histogram is roughly in same range
• added a green rectangle to boost green jacket.
• the scan is missing any blue tones, so result is limited to red/yellow and a bit green tones.
• left my version, right a screenshot of you version.

I limit myself to mostly curves and levels adjustment.

to tackle face area, the new AI selection tool is best way to go.

[smadell]

@Dennis S - I downloaded your .afphoto file and looked at the layer structure. There are a whole lot of adjustment layers - perhaps too many. I have found (for me, at least) that whenever I start to add too many adjustments, the result starts getting worse instead of better. One other question - how sure are you that the kids' hair isn't at least little bit reddish? It certainly would go along with their fair complexions and their names (Donica and Brian). I did an edit and the hair ended up on the reddish-blonde side; I suspect that trying to change that might add a level of "fake-ness" that would be hard to undo.

Anyway, I've attached a JPG (below) and my own .afphoto file. But I'll summarize.
1) A Levels adjustment for color correction. Like you, I used the red, green, and blue channels to adjust, but brought the sliders to the edges of the channel histograms. I also adjusted to "Gamma" slider for each of the channels "to taste."
2) A Selective Color adjustment to try to adjust the blown out whites. Given that no detail is likely to exist, a subtle darkening and tinting of the blown out areas was the best that I could do.
3) An HSL adjustment to lighten the skin and add some saturation (using only the reds). I had to mask the skin, since applying this to the whole layer would give some unfortunate artifacts.
4) A Curves layer, masked to just the eyes, to add some brightness to the eyes.

Here's a JPG with a summary of the changes. Let me know if you like this.

Children Edit.afphoto

[Dennis S]

Thank you both so much! I'll try out your directions