Why your face looks red on your Mac camera, and how to fix it

Short answer: Mac cameras choose their colours by themselves, and they often make skin look redder than it is. Warm lamps, a blue or green background and the camera’s own colour processing all push your face towards red, and macOS has no colour setting to correct it. Start with neutral light and a neutral background. To take the red out for good, reduce it in the picture itself with an app such as Camerture, which has a setting for exactly this.

I built Camerture because of this problem. On my Studio Display, my face looked red in every video call, and there was nothing in macOS to change it. This guide is what I learned while fixing it.

Why your face looks red on camera

In a mirror your skin looks normal, because your eyes adjust to the light in the room. A camera has to work out the colour of the light by itself, and then decides how colourful the picture should be. Four things make that go wrong for skin:

• Warm light. Most ceiling lights and desk lamps give warm, yellowish light. The camera only partly corrects it, and your skin, which is already reddish, shows the leftover warmth more than anything else in the picture.
• Colour around you. Automatic white balance assumes the picture averages out to grey. A blue or green wall, a blue shirt or a bright screen behind you makes it think the light is too cold, so it warms up the whole picture, your face included. A red or orange wall next to you reflects its colour onto your skin.
• Strong colour processing. Small cameras, including the ones in Macs, add contrast and saturation so the picture doesn’t look flat. That turns a slight flush, a red nose or rosacea into clearly red skin.
• Strong light close to your face. Red is the first colour in skin to reach its maximum. When a lamp lights you brightly from close by, your cheeks and forehead turn into flat red patches without detail.

You’re not imagining it, and you’re not alone: Apple’s forums, Reddit and Microsoft’s Teams forums are full of people whose face looks red on an iMac, a MacBook or a Studio Display.

Why you can’t fix it in macOS

macOS has no colour, white balance or saturation setting for any camera. The video effects in Control Center, such as Portrait, Studio Light and Center Stage, blur, light or frame you, but they don’t change colours.

Apps can’t change the colours inside Apple’s cameras either. The built-in FaceTime HD camera and an iPhone used as Continuity Camera have no settings that other apps can reach. The Studio Display’s camera only lets apps switch its automatic white balance on or off, which is what the white paper trick below uses. Mac camera settings apps compared explains which apps can do what.

And the obvious fixes for the whole picture don’t work well. Making the picture cooler until your face looks right turns the wall behind you blue, and lowering the saturation makes everything grey. Your face is red; the room isn’t. What helps is a fix that only touches red skin tones.

How to fix a red face on your Mac camera

Start at the top: the first steps are free.

1. Find out where the red comes from

Open Photo Booth and look at yourself. If you only look red in one call app, the cause is that app: check its video settings for filters, touch-ups and light correction, switch them off and update the app. If you look red in Photo Booth too, it’s the camera and the light. Read on.

2. Change the light

Light makes the biggest difference, and it costs nothing.

• Use daylight-coloured light. Swap warm bulbs near your desk for daylight-coloured ones, around 5000 K on the box.
• Use one kind of light. Daylight from a window plus a warm lamp gives the camera two colours to choose from, and your skin ends up red on one side.
• Soften strong light. Point a bright lamp at the wall instead of at your face, or move it further away. Soft light keeps red skin from turning into flat patches.
• Face the window. Daylight from the front is the most neutral light you have, and the camera handles it best.

There’s more about light in why your Mac camera looks dark.

3. Mind the colours around you

Large areas of strong colour fool the automatic white balance. A white, grey or beige wall behind you and clothes in muted colours give the camera less to get wrong. If you sit in front of a blue wall or wear a blue shirt and look red, that’s very likely why.

4. Lock the white balance on a Studio Display

The Studio Display’s camera has one colour setting that apps can reach: automatic white balance. When you switch it off, the camera keeps the white balance it had at that moment, even when another app starts the camera. That allows a simple calibration:

1. Hold a sheet of white paper in front of the camera, so it fills most of the picture.
2. Wait a few seconds, until the colour settles.
3. Switch off automatic white balance.

The camera now judges colour by the white paper instead of by your room. You need an app for the switch, such as the Camera tab in Camerture, which shows this tip next to it. Redo it when the light in your room changes, for example from day to evening. This fixes a colour cast over the whole picture; if your skin still looks too red afterwards, step 6 takes care of that.

5. On a USB webcam, set the white balance yourself

USB webcams, such as Logitech’s, do have colour settings. In the maker’s app, such as Logi Tune, or in Camerture’s Camera tab, switch off automatic white balance, move the white balance until your skin looks natural, and lower the saturation a little if your camera offers it.

6. Take out the red with Camerture

Camerture has a setting made for this: Reduce skin redness. It only changes red and pinkish-red tones: it turns them slightly towards the warmer, more orange tone of natural skin and makes them a little less intense. Everything else stays as it was, so your face loses the red while the room keeps its colours.

The slider starts at 100, which means no change. Drag it to the left to take out more red; halfway is a good start, then compare with the live preview. A bright red object in the picture, like a red jumper, gets a little calmer too, but at normal settings that’s hard to notice.

Camerture adds its own camera to macOS. You choose “Camerture” once in FaceTime, Zoom, Teams, Meet or any other app, and everyone in the call sees the corrected picture. It also has temperature, tint, saturation, exposure and the other settings Apple left out, works with the built-in camera, the Studio Display, Continuity Camera and USB webcams, remembers your settings for each camera, and processes everything on your Mac. Setting it up takes about a minute; it’s a one-time purchase of $14.99.

Settings that fix a red face

If you use Camerture, these are good starting points. Make small changes and compare with the live preview.

Questions

Why do I look red on camera but not in the mirror?

Your eyes adjust to the light in the room, so your skin looks normal to you. The camera has to guess the colour of the light and adds contrast and saturation to its picture, so any redness in your skin comes out stronger. Warm light and a blue or green background make it worse.

Does the Mac camera have a filter for red skin?

No. macOS’s video effects light, blur or frame you, but don’t change colours, and there’s no colour setting for the camera. Zoom’s “Touch up my appearance” and the soft focus in Teams smooth your skin, but leave its colour alone. To take out the red, you need an app that changes the colours in the picture, such as Camerture.

Why does my Logitech webcam make me look red?

For the same reasons: warm light, colour around you and strong colour processing. The difference is that Logitech webcams have settings you can change: switch off automatic white balance in Logi Tune, set it by hand and lower the saturation. If that’s not enough, Camerture’s Reduce skin redness works on USB webcams too.

Does everyone in the call see the corrected picture?

Yes. You choose the Camerture camera in your call app, so the picture is corrected before the app gets it. It works in FaceTime, Zoom, Teams, Meet and any other app that lets you choose a camera, and keeps working when the Camerture app is closed.