Hi all,
The model in this picture recently removed a cast, so the lower part of her arm is “unnaturally pale”: 
I’ve been struggling to make the skin colour look more even here in GIMP; I’ve tried selecting+feathing and adjusting curves/saturation, and lightness, but it looks too “fake”. Anyone got any good tips on how they would do it?
What I tried was to alternate between the LCH Color and Lightness brush, starting with 50% opacity and decreasing that on each iteration, and eyedroppering on the tanner target skin color. I did the arm and some around the transition area.
Here is a quick edit with photoflow. Not perfect , but could still be improved with some additional work.
What I did:
The PFI file is here, if you are interested…
This was just a fast pass using Wavelet Decompose (5 levels) and matching tones.
GIMP .xcf.bz2 attached for reference:
bride-cast.xcf.bz2 (1.7 MB)
Wow, thanks for all the great tips! I definitely have much to learn – still haven’t found time to try photoflow (does look interesting), though I’ve used wavelet decompose for other things (following patdavid’s great tutorials).
did you mean a new layer with the LCH colour mode and then lightness brushing on the top layer?
Not a layer, but the mode of the brush tool.
I did a quick frequency separation in order to muck about with the color without affecting the texture.
I also recorded how to do it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0njznUQ8RjITnFUYmNJWERvTms/view?usp=sharing
yes, very helpful 
(now to stop using that eraser myself 
)
@Unhammer Ehh, whatever gets the job done. I’m guilty of it myself. However, in most instances, it really is far easier to lay down too much color and then mask it out after the fact. Glad it was helpful.
Staying in GIMP, I would sample color from the upper part of the arm and paint over the lower part using an appropriate brush color blend mode.
Hello!
I hope you guys don’t mind that I’m bringing back that old thread.
But it matches perfectly my issue on a current photo of mine and I’m searching for advices.
The starting point are harsh shadows on a subject that I’d like to remove or at least reduce as best as possible. Im working on GIMP in version 2.10.18
So far I made some progress by performing a Wavelet Decompose with 7 scales and evening out the hard edges on the last 3 scale layers under the residual layer.
That helped to get a smoother transition between the dark and the brighter areas.
Next i wanted to work (up)on the residual layer (I’m using a transparent layer over the residual) with a soft brush altering between LCh color and LCH Lightness Mode to even out the tonal transition. And this is the point where I’m having issues to get a smooth transition. So far the results are not very pleasing.
Any advice or help would be highly ppreciated.
Thank you @s7habo for taking the time and creating a screen record of your proposal. As usual your contributions are really helpful.
The result is actually pretty convincing for my purposes and the “Blend Blur Brush” is probably the tool i was looking for. However while trying to reproduce the steps i was struckling in the usage of the Blend Blur Brush and while I believe my issues are mostly caused due to my inexperience in GIMP i was wondering if there is any setting that I might have overlooked.
In your video the very first 3-4 brush strokes on the residual layer cause a significant better transition while in my attempts the same brush strokes (at least I believe so) create some kind of blur but not really the same transition and after a few brush strokes more the transition area becomes visibly “peachy”. Kinda difficult to explain. I should consider making a screen record as well. But maybe anyone got a hint.
Got to practice more in the meantime.
This can have various causes.
Starting at 1:16 you can see that I converted the image from 8 bit integer (perceptual) to 32 bit floating point (linear light).
8 bit is not good for fine transitions, because the gradations can be very expressive. At the end of the processing I converted it back to the original 8 bit jpg image.
The settings of brush itself. I used a MyPaint brush that is good for mixing the colors. Have a look at the exact settings I used.
Yes, maybe this is a good idea. Then we can see what you’ve done.
I guess your blue channel is still selected (not the copy).
Is this how it looks by you?:
Blue channel should not be grey but like this:
Indeed that was the reason.
Gave it a try and it’s working way better now.
Thank you so much @s7habo.
If you like to showcase the procedure on your Youtube Channel, I’d be glad to provide you the full portrait. Feel free to contact me. I’m certain, this is gonna be helpful for a lot of people out there.
Any idea how to bring back some of the natural skin redness after this procedure?
On a large scale the skin becomes look a bit fake…
