I photographed anoter baby this past weekend and unfortunately, the night before, he slept on his face weird and had a red mark on his left cheek for the whole day. First of all, do you think I should try to retouch it out? And if you were to do it, what would be your easiest way to get acceptable quality?

Here is a way, but not the way... I think Dan has too much influence over me.

(1) Use eyedropper to select a color you like for the cheek
(2) paint over the bad cheek using the paintbrush with low opacity and flow. I used 22% for each. Set mode to lighten.

Here is what I ended up with:

[attachmentid=1802]

Can you show us what it might look in BW? Maybe you might not have to PS as much if they see it in BW.

Great job in removing the spot though!!! I couldnt' tell it was even done until I zoomed in on her cheek

It is hard to say with such a small file but I would leave it, unless the parents want it gone, the red mark is cute.

Jim’s way is the route I would take but I would do the work on a duplicate layer and fiddle with the opacity to create a good balance between the corrected check and the original.

Thanks for the suggestions. I was hoping someone would tell me to only work on the red channel and then use the channel mixer on another layer with soft light selected.... Or something fancy like that. ;-) It's just that I have a zillion of these pictures. Ha ha. I'll probably retouch one or two to show them what it would look like.

I did try a quick BW conversion, but it looked darker. Maybe I should layer the red channel onto a Desaturated layer and drop the opacity. That might do it.

Thanks again, and once my iBook gets fixed (for the 12th, yes, 12th, time) I'll post another slideshow of this baby's session.

Can you just use another baby's face?? hehe... (sorry for the lack of seriousness... maybe that was mean)

Adam...the eyes in that shot are awesome!

His eyes were so cool. I was able to get a slide show up this morning before the ol' iBook completely died (but that's another story).

I'm not bothered by the red mark...I guess that's because my 2 of my 3 crumb crunchers got them all the time...(the 1 year old still does!). If the rosy cheek really bothers the mom and if you can't get to someplace you're happy with by retouching, I'd offer to re-shoot...but I wouldn't worry about it too much. That's just my opinion.

But I also wouldn't hesitate to go B&W and try to retouch those in grayscale -- may be a bit more forgiving than color...

The mom seemed a bit concerned, that's why I asked. It doesn't bother me much at all, either. I'll try to talk her into leaving it.

If mom was concerned, re-shoot it. Go the extra mile and she'll likely buy more from both sessions (and perhaps book more) and she'll probably give you good referrals. That's just what I would do...

It's tough with kids...I did a brother & sister shoot (ages 1 & 4) a couple of years ago and 45 minutes before they were to come over, the 1 year-old fell and busted his lip. We still did the session...but I really wished that I had offered to reshoot...even if just to do an "express" session a few days later, I know I would have had more sales. Even if you do a bang-up (sorry, pun intended) job in PS of clearing up the defect (for lack of a better term), MOM still knows what is behind it.

My 1 year old is one of the hardest kids to photograph...he always has a scratch or bump / bruise...I'll have to post his "scarface" pic from his 1st birthday...looks kinda like a veteran hockey player...