Hello graphic makers!! You’re probably aware that there is a huge problem on tumblr with whitewashing. As a predominantly disney-based blogger, the whitewashing I personally see are from the disney fandom, so I’m going to use screencaps from those movies to show you several quick techniques so you’ll see just how easy it is to have your pretty bright and pastel colour palettes and not whitewash characters of colour.

disclaimers: I am white. If I say anything wrong or out of line please please please let me know. I am trying to be as educated and respectful as I can, and to help those who a) may not actually know that they are whitewashing characters or b) are scared to make edits with non-white characters because they think they will whitewash them/they are only used to pale colour palettes, or c) they have already posted an edit with a whitewashed character and they don’t know how to fix it. I am still learning and trying to help others learn.

Also I only work with still caps, not gifs. I know colouring with gifs is different so these techniques might need altering.

Special thanks to freshprinceofmaldonia​ for helping my out.

All of these take less than 5 mins, so even if you’ve posted something that is whitewashed and someone calls you out, you can apologize and fix it super quickly.

1. Selective Colour

This is an unedited cap of Nani. She’s not white. Let’s tweak the picture a little so that is matches the tumblr pastel aesthetics (increasing the brightness, lowering the contrast, lowering the saturation)

Do you see how wrong this looks in comparison to the original?? This isn’t nani. One easy way to fix with is with the “Selective colour…” option (in Image > Adjustments tab in Photoshop CC 2014. If you’re not using that, take time to find it in your own image editing software. Even outside of this whitewhashing context it’s a very useful tool for photo editing) and darken the red. if you want to make it less saturated it a little (since it can often look a little orange), try increasing the cyan, but not really the magenta and blue as they will make the skin look a little too pink. If it looks too pink, increase the yellow and/or green.

This technique works best with a non-red background. As you can see, the red in the mulan poster also darked a lot, so if that bothers you can just undo, and select only the area with nani in it, and repeat the selective colour. This is the easiest way to quickly fix something you brightened a little too much but you’re happy with the brightness of the rest of the picture. Just be careful with the rest of the red in the picture as you’ll also be darkening that.

Here’s an alternate edit where the mulan poster was deselected and the saturation of the whole picture was decreased so it’s a little more “pastel”.

2. Soft Light Overlay

Here’s a really dark unedited screencap, let’s play around with the light levels to brighten it a little.

This looks ok, very saturated, and there skins are clearly brown. This could be your finished edit, but we want a pastel colour palette again, so lets add a white soft light overlay.

Aaaahhh!!! Do not leave this cap like this please this should not be your finished edit. The clothes and hammock look lovely, but their skin is not this colour. However, this is also so easy to fix since it’s on a separate layer, so just erase the parts of the layer that are on their skin.

Much better. Their skin looks even darker than it did in the 1st edit because it’s now contrasted with the pastels. this could be your finished edit. But if you want it to be even more pastel then just desaturate it a little and duplicate your overlay layer.

For this particular cap, you could also just use the selective colour on blue and cyan and increase the whites, which would still keep Nani and Lilo’s skin a beautiful brown:

3. Levels (+layers?)

Here’s Jasmine. She’s not white either. And yet she’s probably the biggest victim of whitewashing in disney edits (and official disney march tbh). This cap is very red/yellow, so the selective colour won’t work for this at all. So instead, let’s play around with the light levels to edit this.

PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE MY POOR JASMINE IN THIS STATE. THIS IS NOT JASMINE. Please, you all make me want to cry when I see this kind of stuff on my dash. Why do you insist on doing this to Jasmine and Aladdin. 

However, the background looks ok. so lets try again. You’re going to duplicate your original unedited cap so you have 2 layers, and then play around the levels again to get the brightened image on the top layer, and then erase the parts of Jasmine’s skin on that layer so that the original skin colour shows up underneath.

Look, she’s back!! Amazing!! You can leave it like this, or if you want you can also erase the outfit since her headscarf is darker than her skin in the original cap. you can also lighten the background a little to contrast with her using either levels, selective colour, or an overlay.

4. Black and White

What about black and white edits?? Yeah you can whitewash them too. So here’s 2 ways to avoid that.

Here’s an unedited cap of Esmeralda. She’s not white. First we’re going to brighten and increase the contrast a little before removing the colour.

Look at how gorgeous she is. (Also, note how similar the colour of the background is to her skin). Now the first way we can turn this picture black and white is to just decrease the saturation completely.

Tada!! This looks a bit dull though, not a lot of contrast. How about adding a white soft light overlay again to brighten things up?

No!!! Please erase the parts of her skin immediately!!!

much better. now the picture is striking and you didn’t ruin her beautiful skin. 

A second way to turn the picture black and white is to go into Image > Adjustments > Black & White. there you have a lot more options about which colours will turn a light grey and which will turn a dark grey. so here, for example, you can emphasise beautiful green eyes.

again, you can add some white soft light overlay for the background for more contrast.

5. Final notes

here’s a quick summary:

A simple tip would be if you are white, which you probably are if you do have problem with whitewashing, just put your own hand near the screen and compare it to the character’s skin. 

Also please check that people’s skin colours aren’t bright orange, magenta, red, or any unnatural colour. While it’s not really racist, it’s not very pretty. Even with white characters you don’t want their skin to be too pale. No one’s skin should be #ffffff other than mulan’s matchmaker make up. 

Honestly, if you’re worried that you could be whitewashing a POC, either ask a friend for a second opinion, or just darken it a little using one of these techniques. It’s better for you to be completely sure that the skin is fine rather than post it and hope for the best. You can also lighten everything around the skin since the contrast makes the skin looks darker. 

If you have whitewashed a character, apologize and fix this as soon as you can, and try to not do it again. It just takes 5 minutes of your time. Representing accurate skin colours is more important than your aesthetics. Please edit responsibly. Thank you.