Dark Bronze Skin Tones and Other Simple Color Manipulation Tricks in Photoshop
By Yan • Jan 19th, 2008 • Category: Photoshop Tutorials, Top Picks
(Mark, get out of my face or I swear I won’t write this. Stop hovering, dammit! Love you! Now, scat!)
Changing skin tones and manipulating portrait colors in photoshop seem to be the craze these days. And I’ve been doing it for the longest time without really any conscious effort on my part. But I’ve been asked to write this basic photoshop tutorial, so I will attempt to retrace my steps.
After many false starts, I figured that the best way to write this is from a first person perspective. The didactic tone never really worked for me, anyway.
Step 1. I first created a new layer above my original background image and filled it with black (#000000).
Step 2. I then duplicated my background image and changed its layer style to Luminosity.
Step 3. Next, I made a second duplicate of my original background image and played with its brightness and contrast settings. You can do this by going to Image in your Top Menu, selecting Adjustments, and clicking on Brightness/Contrast (Image»Adjustments»Brightness/Contrast). I played with the Brightness and Contrast until I got something that looks like this:
Step 4. Still working on my second duplicate image layer, which I renamed “Background copy 2″, I changed the Layer Style to Luminosity. The result looked like this:
Step 5: I then made yet another duplicate of my original background image and named it “Background copy 3″. I then changed its Layer Style to Vivid Light and changed its Opacity to 34%.
Step 6: At this point, the photo was starting to shape up the way I wanted it. But the purple shirt was really bothering me. It stood out so horrendously that I just had to get rid of it. To do that, I made a fourth duplicate of my original background image. This time I (unimaginatively) named it “shirt”. I then desaturated the layer by going to my Image menu, hovering over Adjustments, and clicking on Desaturate (Image»Adjustments»Desaturate).
Step 7: That took care of the purple shirt, but it also got rid of the colors of the rest of the image. So, I needed to get rid of the rest of the desaturated areas and just retain the shirt. To do this, I used the Layer Mask Tool to mask out the area outside the shirt. You don’t have the be overly accurate. You may have noticed that my brush strokes are not exactly perfect. As long as you get rid of visible areas, that should do the trick.
Step 8: To add some highlights and textures, I created a fifth duplicate of my background image and named it “Background copy 4″. I then added some noise by going to Filter»Noise»Add Noise. Next, I added a bit of blur by going to Filter» Blur»Motion Blur. For the motion blur, I set my angle to 0 with a distance of 38 pixels. The noised and blurred layer looked like this:
Step 9: Using the same layer as in step 8 (noised and blurred), I changed the Layer Style to Overlay. Then, I changed the Layer Opacity to 47%.
Step 10: As a final touch, I created a new blank layer and filled it with orange. I used #f8c618 (R=248, G=198, B=24) for this particular image, but feel free to experiment. I then changed the Layer Style to Overlay and set the Opacity to 14%. And voila! Portrait manipulation in photoshop done.
Extras: You can even go the extra mile and create new backgrounds for your portrait. In the example below, I simply used the Radial Blur filter and Zoomed in on the blur.
Stunning portrait courtesy of BigMakoy, who annoys me no end but still manages to win me over every single time. Grrr.
Yan (a.k.a. Yannie, YanYan) is a young-ish entrepreneur, writer, poet, artist, graphic designer, web geek, lover, friend, daughter, connoisseur, gourmand, amateur chef, coffee addict, control freak, and incessant dreamer. Not necessarily in that order.
© 2008 FubarGenre | All posts by Yan
Yahoooo!!!! Thanks, Baby!!!
Now, I can post process my photos without bugging you all the time!
More, more, please!
bleeh ~ you still owe me!
thanks, belkacem! hope it made sense somehowl!
In step 4, are u sure u played only with contrast and brightness? I didnt work for me! It looks like u saturated:S
hi, Bassem. You mean step 3, right? I tweaked the brightness/contrast in step 3 and changed its layer style to Luminosity in step 4.
hi yan, it seems that when a make a copy of the background in step 2, i’m getting a copy of the layer. all i get is a black canvas. would appriciate any help. thanks in advance.
hi, kirbster! Thanks for reading this tutorial. You have to copy your bottom layer - i.e., the layer with your original image, not the one with the black paint.
thanks. this is an awesome tutorial. i’ll be waiting to see more awesome tutorials from you.
great job here
hi yan can u help me how can i make the changes in my pic
help me how to download here pls
Thanks for the tutorial. But it seems step 3 doesn’t work. (Image»Adjustments»Brightness/Contrast). Tried to duplicate the original image but adjusting brightness/contrast seems to ruin the whole image including the background.
Would appreciate if you can give the values that you used for the brightness/contrast for step 3. Tried every adjustments on brightness/contrast but it’s nowhere near your example. Thanks in advance!
hi, angel. what exactly do you want to download? What kind of help do you need?
hi, Mark. Unfortunately, I already flattened the image. Much as I want to retrace my steps, I can’t anymore. But I’ll try to dig it up. Maybe I kept a copy of the raw file somewhere.
In the meantime, keep playing with the brightness/contrast settings. Even it you don’t achieve something identical, at least you’d have something that resembles the colors in my example.
Do note that changing the brightness/contrast in a different image may work differently from the image I used.
Step 3 not working for me.. I think Bassem is right.. You’re saturating in this step..
I’m pretty sure I didn’t saturate. The output may also depend on the image you’re working on. I was lucky coz my image already had saturated colors in its original raw format. Do try playing with saturation settings and let me know if it works. As I said, the key is to keep playing and experimenting. Good luck!
Thanks Yan, great work!
Keep the talents flowing
You are awesome, Yan
Hi from a random bloghopper! 
Keep up the great work. God bless.
VERY NICE THANKS
Did you use exposure on step 3?
just askin? Nice tutorial by the way.
Yan RULES and boys DROOL..
Yan, you rock girl keep up the great work and thank you for the Bronze skin tone tutorial. I would love to share with you some of the images that I used it in.
Again Thanks.
@catnap: lol. I don’t see anyone drooling. but thanks!
I’d love to see your images. Do leave me links to some of your works. 
@shadow: nope, no exposure on step 3.
…and to everyone else who dropped by, Hi.
cool kaau ang graphics!
i know guile personally..
hi. i have a question
after doing the 3rd duplicate layer [the one with vivid light as blend mode], i get a high contrast image, even when turning the opacity down. the skin tone gets real bad. help please
thanks!
amazing!!! i got lots of pictures for you to work on hehehehe
nice work yan… miss you and makoy mwah mwah mwah!
superb work!
yan, do you have any tricks to share on how to enhance black and white photos?
te, nice work!
step 5 didnt work for me at all. went really weird, not like ur example…..so i just skipped that bit…..dont know why it went strange, as i did everything u said. went more dark with hardly any colour….x
hi!
i really enjoy your tutorial and it’s very helpful… i am still new to photoshop tweaks and post processing.
yan, i’d like to know few questions…
1>how do i save my work to include the history of my work for my future reference.
2>how do i go back to edit example in step8..i would like to change the distance from 38 to lets say 45..
what i do sometime is go back and redo all over again…sorry its so darn damn question…but i’m telling the truth… wahhh>>>
thanks in advance
nice one thnx for sharing
Hey, thanks u are very talented in photoshop.
BTW great turtorila THANKS!
Great post, thanks for the info
Hey there, nice tut, but it kinda doesn’t work for me…:-( it needs to have almost the same skin tone properties like the picture here…:-( isn’t there any other more complex method??? thanks