Sometimes after taking a photo of a person or a group of people, you may find that the photo would look much better with some slight editing or retouching. One potential problem with the picture may be if someone in the shot has obviously oily skin or shiny skin, which may have been made worse by your camera flash or by the surrounding lighting.
One reason to remove, repair, or reduce the unflattering appearance of oily or shiny skin on someone’s face, would be to prevent embarrassing that person in a picture that must be shared, as it may be a one-of-a-kind moment or meeting between friends, for example.
At any rate, the following is a quick and simple method to fix or improve the shine on a person’s face in a photo, whether it involves someone’s forehead, cheeks, nose, or other area of their face. Photoshop is used for the method below to reduce the appearance of oily or shiny skin.
Reduce a Person’s Oily or Shiny Skin in a Picture
- Open your image in Photoshop.
- From the Toolbox in Photoshop, click to select the “Healing Brush Tool” (or press the “J” key).
- From the Options Bar in Photoshop:
a. For “Mode” choose “Darken”.
b. For “Source” choose “Sampled”.
c. For “Sample” choose “All Layers”. - From the Options Bar, click on “Brush”.
a. For “Diameter” (brush size), choose “30 px”.
b. For “Hardness” choose “0%”.
c. For other settings shown under “Brush” match the values in the screenshot, but settings for Diameter and Hardness are more important here. - Create a new layer, and name it as the “Repair Layer”
- On the person’s face with the oily/shiny skin, find an area of skin that you think looks “good”, which is the target skin tone that you would like in the final photo. On this “good” area of skin, hold “Alt” and click on this area. (In some cases, it may be helpful to look for a “good” area that is as close to the problem area as possible. For example, if the problem area is the forehead, then try to choose a “good” skin area on the forehead. This is not necessary in general, but may help some to achieve improved results.)
- Make sure the Repair Layer is still the active layer, then while still using the Healing Brush Tool, click on the problem areas to paint over these oily/shiny spots.
- Apply a slight Gaussian Blur to the Repair Layer.
- For the Repair Layer, lower the opacity to get a more natural result. A value of about 60% should give good results. You may find a different value fits your photo better.
- Save your Photoshop file in case you would like to make further changes later.
- Save your final edited image file.
You should now see a noticeable improvement in the edited photo, so that the oily or shiny skin of the person in the photo has been reduced and is no longer an issue.