Lightening dark neck area of skin

[johnnyadams]

I have a bride who wants her neck crease lightened,,, I have tried a few methods like dodging, clone stamp with a 50% transparency etc and auto heal. Its does seem very tedious with these methods and very hard to get a good blend. Is there an easier, quicker way to lighten the dark crease in the woman's neck and make it realistic?

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi Johnny
I believe it is mostly tedious. The example I give was not too difficult yet I will not claim this is quality work. Just an example approach you could investigate.

- I made the image a Smart Object
- The I used the Adobe Camera Raw filter
- In the ACR filter I used the healing brushes with a good amount of feathering and reduced the opacity to leave a little bit of crease in
- In the ACR filter I then used the adjustment brush to increase the tone and reduce the contract in the tone. Settings I used were -52 contrast, +13 blacks, -100 clarity. I applied these setting to several areas along the neck crease that needed a reduction in the contrast.
- The back to PS, I added a blank Layer set to Color blend, sampled a good skin color, and then brushed over the areas that were not desired color from the ACR adjustments

Adjust opacity on the Layers and the ACR filter to taste

Not the best work yet was pretty quick to give you an idea on approach.

Hope this helps

John Wheeler