Red Gel Portrait, Hair and Skin

Beauty retouching

A gelled red portrait cleaned so the hair keeps its strand detail and the face reads through a strongly coloured light.

Gel lighting
Hair
Skin

Service: Beauty Retouching

The same portrait with hair detail recovered and facial modelling rebuilt under the gel — Drag anywhere on the image, or focus the handle and use the arrow keys, to compare before and after.

Portrait under a strong red gel with flattened facial modelling and compressed hair detail — Drag anywhere on the image, or focus the handle and use the arrow keys, to compare before and after.

Project overview

A red gel compresses everything toward one hue. Detail in red hair against a red-lit background is the hardest part of the frame, and skin under a red key loses its modelling first.

Transformation details

Luminance was recovered in the hair before any colour work, because a hue correction on top of clipped detail restores nothing.
The face was pulled back toward neutral by a small amount only — enough to read, not enough to break the gel look the photographer chose.
Dodge and burn rebuilt the modelling the gel had flattened along the cheek and the collarbone.
Stray strands were cleaned at the outline, keeping the hair's overall shape.