Photoshop Tutorials

Reduce slight freckles naturally without using the Healing Brush. In this Photoshop tutorial, you'll learn how to subtract freckles using a layer. This process provides the most natural results for light-brown freckles (ephelides) but will not work for dark freckles (lentigines).

Preview of Final Results

Remove Freckles Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1: Open an image into Photoshop

Open the photo with the freckles you would like to remove. To open a file, open the File menu and select Open. Then, browse for the photo and click OK. This tutorial only works for light-brown freckles (ephelides); not dark freckles (lentigines).

Step 2: Convert to CMYK color

To subtract the freckles, we need to find a channel that shows the most freckles. This is usually shown in the Yellow channel but to access that channel, we need to convert the image mode to CMYK. Convert the image to CMYK color by opening the Image> Mode menu and selecting CMYK Color. When you convert to CMYK color, the colors will shift and look different, but we'll show you a way to get around this issue later.

Step 3: Select the yellow channel

In the Channels pallet, click on the yellow channel to view it. You can see that the yellow channel shows a lot of freckles and this is what we're looking for.

Step 4: Copy the yellow channel

Now we're going to create a new layer with the yellow channel in it. Press Ctrl+A or open the Select menu and click All. This will create a selection of the canvas. With the selection created, Press Ctrl+C or open the Edit menu and choose Copy.