Retouch a photo

Even skin tone in a photo

Even out skin tone, every pore kept.

Blotchy patches calm down while the texture of real skin stays exactly where it was.

A portrait in reasonable light: JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, BMP and ICO open natively, HEIC fetches its decoder once, and TIFF opens where your browser supports it.

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Lower face of a portrait print: left half untouched, right half with the tone evened
What this tool does, and the files it opens

The skin layer with texture removal at zero and tone evening prepared at 30 per cent: blotchiness across a cheek softens, and every pore stays where it was.

Open a portrait and the Skin panel opens with texture removal at 0 and tone evening prepared at 30 per cent — off until you turn it on. Place the working region over the face first, and check the mask.

A portrait in reasonable light: JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, BMP and ICO open natively, HEIC fetches its decoder once, and TIFF opens where your browser supports it.

Keys on the desk: Move V · Heal J · Clone S · Smooth B · Dodge O · Burn N · Colour A · Whiten W · Red-eye R · Skin F · Shine H · Under-eye U · Face G · hold Space to see the original · Ctrl Z to undo.

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Tone is not texture

The skin layer splits a face into two bands. The high band is pores and fine grain; the low band is the tone underneath — redness across a cheek, a patch that photographed darker. This page opens with the high band left completely alone and only the low band evened, at 30 per cent. The pore-texture-retained figure stays at or near 100 per cent, and that is the point.

Evening is done at a fraction of the slider — 45 per cent of it — on the low band only, so even at the top of the range the face keeps the variation that makes it look alive rather than painted.

What this mode runs on
Texture removed
0% on open
Tone evened
prepared at 30%
Applied as
45% of the slider, low band only
Gate
the face's own median Cb/Cr, tolerance 20
Colour
held

What it will not do

  • It does not lighten or darken skin. It evens luminance variation; the colour of every pixel is written back as read.
  • It is not a treatment. It changes a photograph, not skin; nothing here makes a medical claim.
  • It cannot separate a birthmark from a blotch. If a mark should stay, keep it outside the region or lower the value.

What people ask

Why is texture removal at zero here?
Because evening tone and removing texture are different jobs, and this page is for the first. Raise texture on the skin page if you want both.
Will it make my skin lighter?
No. The layer moves luminance only and is clamped so no channel clips; the chroma harness measures hue and chroma drift on nine synthetic tones on every build.
It is evening the background too.
Press Show what it calls skin. Pull the region in, or narrow the tolerance, until the tint stops at the face.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The layer runs in this tab.

Read next

Photographic visual for Even Skin Tone