This blog post will be a quick tutorial on how to Photoshop sunburns off your skin! Now, this may seem like a random post, but there is a funny backstory. I went skiing a while back on a pretty sunny day. I had put on sunscreen that morning, but apparently not enough. Being outside all day was not for the best for me, and I ended up looking like this…

It gets better (and a lot funnier) though! Not only did I have this giant sunburn on my forehead for everyone to see, but I had professional photos the next day. Those turned out like this…

So, yeah. A giant red mark on my forehead for my professional photo. Kind of a bummer, but I am a “professional Photoshop expert” so it can be fixed! If you happen to be in the same situation as me; having a giant sunburn on a photo that you really like, here is a tutorial that can help clear it up!

You’ll obviously want to start by opening up your photo in Photoshop. Make sure once you do that, you duplicate the layer so that you don’t make any changes to the original file, and you can go back easier if you mess up. Then, save your .psd file in an important place!

Before making changes to your sunburn, now would be a good time to touch up any blemishes on your face. This could mean getting rid of wrinkles, acne spots, or hair/specks that fell onto your clothes. These are all touch-ups that I made in order to make myself look better. When adding touch-ups, make them on a new layer so that you don’t affect the original photo. Using either the Spot Healing Brush or Healing Brush can help you a lot!

Another thing I did to enhance my photo is whitening my teeth. You can do this by selecting the area around your teeth, creating a mask, then taking away any yellow undertones by changing the Hue/Saturation in the effects.

Now comes the big part: getting rid of the sunburn. When you think about it, it isn’t too hard. It mostly takes time to adjust the colors to your correct skin tone. The process itself wasn’t very difficult, because it is similar to the step for whitening your teeth.

You are going to start by selecting the red area affected by sunburn. In order for there to be a smoother transition from sunburn to natural skin, you can go into the Layer Mask panel and mess with the options like Smooth, Feather, and Contrast. Play around with these until you are happy with the selection that you have, then apply the mask. A hint here is also to change the color of the unselected to area to something other than red, so it is easier to see the red you are selecting on your face/body.

The next part has a lot of adjusting based on your own skin tone. You will select the Hue/Saturation button like we did with the whitening teeth and make adjustments there. I made some adjustments under the master channel, but most changes were made under the red channel in order to get rid of the redness in my skin. Yours will look different from mine at this point, but keep playing around with it until you are satisfied with the final product!

That is how you improve the look of your sunburn! Hopefully this helped you out with the photos that you like. Now, go put on some sunscreen and some aloe vera, and hope your sunburn heals quickly!

TC