In this tutorial, you will learn how to change skin tone in Photoshop.
For this tutorial, we will be working on a free stock image which can be downloaded from the following link:
http://www.freeimages.com/photo/922236

Don't forget to check out our site http://howtech.tv/ for more free how-to videos!
http://youtube.com/ithowtovids - our feed
http://www.facebook.com/howtechtv - join us on facebook
https://plus.google.com/103440382717658277879 - our group in Google+

Step 1 -- Making a selection of the Face
Before learning how to change skin tone in Photoshop, you need to duplicate the background layer and hide the original layer. Now all the work we will be doing will be on the duplicated layer.
Next, we will have to make a selection of the face so that we can change the skin tone. For that, let's move to the Select menu at the top and open up the color range tool. Over here, select the "Add sample" tool from the corner. Now use this tool to select all the different complexion tones of the face.
You can do that by simply using the eyedropper tool and clicking on different areas of the face. You will notice that as you keep adding different samples, the selection keeps on changing.

Step 2 -- Deselecting the irrelevant areas
You will notice that a lot of the background will also get included in the selection. Not to worry since we will be using the lasso tool to remove some of the selection.
With the selection active, pick up the lasso tool to deselect the irrelevant areas of the image. To do that, press and hold the Alt key and now make a rough selection of the background starting from the hair and covering the whole background. Once you connect the path, notice that the background selection will be removed automatically.

Step 3 -- Making a cleaner selection
Now the same thing has to be done for the eyes and lips. Press and hold the ALT key while using the lasso tool to deselect the portion of the eyes that have been included in the samples by the Color Range tool.
Using the color range tool, some of the edges of the face might not have been sampled. So you would have to use the lasso tool add them to the selection. For that, make sure the "add to selection" option is selected and now you can trace the areas which you want to include in the selection.
The same goes for any part of the face that might have not been selected with the color range tool including the lips and parts of the nose.

Step 4 -- Feather selection
Once the selection has been made, open up the select menu at the top, move over to modify and then select the feather option. In this image, we will choose a radius of 4 pixels.

Step 5 -- Creating a layer mask
With that done, let's move to the layer panel and use the button at the bottom to create a mask.

Step 6 -- Levels Adjustment
After that, click on the button next to the mask option and create a level adjustment layer. With that done, we will adjust the bar to alter the complexion of the face. You can try out different values to see what would look better on the image you are working on. For this specific image, we used 42, 0.97 and 255 respectively.

Step 7 -- Creating a clipping mask
If you change the level adjustment, the effect is applied to the whole layer. We want the effects to be only applied to the selection that we had made earlier. For that, right click on the current adjustment layer and select the "Create a Clipping Mask" option. Now the changes would only be applied to the face.

Step 8 -- Curves Adjustment Layer
From the layer panel, let's select the curve adjustment layer option next and adjust the graph to decrease the brightness. For that, you would have to add an anchor point in the middle of the straight line and move it upwards a bit to form a curve. Now select the top most point and move it towards the left side. You can keep experimenting with the graph until you're satisfied with the results.
Next, right click on the curve adjustment layer and select the "Create a Clipping Mask" option so that the changes are only applied on the mask.

Step 9 -- Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer
Lastly, we will add the hue and saturation adjustment layer. Over here, you can change the skin tone accordingly. For example, you can set the Hue to -2, saturation to +3 and lightness to -5. You can play around with different Hues and saturation levels here to see what fits better with the face complexion.
At the end, remember to create the clipping mask so that the adjustment layer is only applied at the mask.
And that's it for how to change skin tone in Photoshop.