Hi everybody

I'm from Greece and this is my first post. I'm trying to improve this photo of my daughter in Photoshop, but I can't fix the skin tone. Can someone help me fix the photo and especially the skin tones? Please explain the steps to follow. Thanks in advance

Hmm, where to start....

1. Levels Adjustment
2. Hue/Saturation Adjustment
3. Selected area of colour I liked with colour picker and then brushed onto a
new layer in hue mode over the areas that were blotchy, otherwise
coloured (do not recall the opacity, but think it was relatively low)
4. Applied a 50% Grey Layer in overlay mode to enable manual dodging &
burning for appeal
5. Evened shadow
6. Using a 1px smudge in darken mode, lifted a few of the eyelashes

Hey TheRa, and welcome to RP.

First off good shot.

I did a lot of playing with this image, but here goes.

1. Assigned Adobe RGB Profile
2. Used heal and clone to even out the skin, remove blemishes, etc.
3. Duplicated the layer and ran median on it (3 px diameter) Then I used the smudge tool and brushed along the skin to even out the colors and tones. Masked it to the skin. Set opacity of this layer to 33% and blended it with soft light
4. Added a selective color adjustment layer, set to absolute. Played with the color until the CMYK values in the skin were correct. (More info here in an excellect post by Flora (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=88167&postcount=5)) Final numbers: Red <-23, 13, 10, 0> Yellow <11, 10, 4, -48>
5. Added a curves adjustment layer, pulled up the mid tones
6. Ran Levels to pull them back down (steps 5 and 6 increase contrast without affecting brightness much.)
7. Solid color layer (red) masked over the lips. Color blend mode at 58% opacity
8. Duplicated, pulled the color a little darker without changing the hue value, cleared the mask and masked around the lips. Hard Light blend mode at 47% opacity.
9. Levels layer, <26, 3.38, 137>, copied the blue channel to the mask and painted out everything but the lips. Then ran levels on the mask isolate the levels to the natural highlights of the lips to make them appear more glossy. Set to 32% opacity.
10. Solid color layer in blue, masked to the upper lids. Vivid Light blend mode, 7%.
11. Levels layer, <0, .59, 255>, cleared mask and painted along the edges of the eyes (eye liner). 13%
12. With a large soft brush set to dark grey, paint in on the lipstick layer the cheeks and forehead. (Blush)
13. Duplicate whole image, flatten and copy into original as top layer. Ran highpass filter (1px radius) and blend with Vivid Light. (Sharpening)
14. Added a 50% grey layer, added 12.5% gaussian monochromatic grain, blended at 12% on soft light.

I'd like to spend a little more time on this, but this should at least point you in the right direction.

Take Care,

Michael

may have to recalibrate, looks like I fell short on the burn of left eye.

Michael, do I get an engineering degree after this (only in the fondest of terms and with admiration) :)

Sorry, I'm not all that good at writing out directions. If you have any questions, post back and I'll try to explain it better.

Michael

Nothing wrong with your explanation at all Michael, have to applaud your detail. I just saw all the numbers and it reminded me of being back at school. The likes of yourself and Flora and a couple of others who provide extensive detail as opposed to the sort of detail many of us including me, contribute, should serve as an example of true help.

since all you asked for was skin tone, i kept this simple. in psp 9 i ran a black and white points correction and a contrast adjustment layer of 0 light/25 contrast. that's all.

oh, and welcome to RP, TheRa :)

Craig

At the risk of being redundant, welcome also!! I admit that I am a bit of a minimalist and like Craig's approach. It may or may not be what you are after but here is what I did. I thought your image lacked a bit of contrast and slight color cast.

Click on Create a new layer at the bottom of the layers palette.
Go to your top menu: Edit: Fill: 50% grey:Normal. Click OK
In the Layers Palette change the blend mode to Difference (might look pretty funky!)
Click on New Adjustment Layer at bottom of Layers palette and click on Threshold. Move slider all the way to the left, then slowly drag to the right until black starts to show. You'll probably find the first strong area the shadow under her arm. Chances are this is a good medium grey point.
Locate your sample picker under Tools and click to leave a marker on the shadow area. Now drag all adjustment layers to the dumpster.
Create a Curves adjustment layer and with the middle picker selected, click on the marker in the shadow of the arm. This should pretty well neutralize the color cast.

Now, right click on the blue bar on your image and duplicate. For me I did Noise:Median:5 / Gaussian Blur:2.3 /Noise:Noise:2: Gaussian:Monochrome Unchecked.
Shift drag onto original layer and change blend mode to Soft Light.

You also may want to Sharpen ever so slightly but don't overdo it or you'll lose the dreamy mood.

I also posted a more yellowy version but I personally don't like it as much.


Good luck

Dave

I have a small FX program called ColorCastFX i have no idea how to upload the program here, any ideas?

But you have a choice of 6 different cameras and it puts the colour into the right mode.

ColorcastFX can be downloaded from MediaChance's website.

http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/castfx.htm

.....and it's free. They also offer several other tools for free (top left menu), however, no Photoshop plug in versions.

Not sure how "friendly" ColorFX is. When I tried it, I got blown out whites on each setting and the skin color is way out of gamut. Maybe there's something I don't know though.

Dave

Just downloaded ColorcastFX and its an interesting little program, tried it on a couple of my 'yuk' photos from over the years and it does a rather quick acceptable job to say the least. I did however find that if a photo was only just sub acceptable then it would blow out the whites but on strongly colourcast photos, a handy tool

Thanks so much for the responses and for posting the steps. I will work through these steps and try to make the photo better. Thanks again.

My version. Using a plugin called Kodak Digital GEM Airbrush Professional
Pete

The problem with this image, aside from the flat tone overall, is that there is virtually no variation in the hue. It's almost a duotone. Even after a trip into CMYK to sharpen the black plate and pull a contrast curve in Luminosity mode, there was virtually no variation in color over the whole surface of the skin. A quick trip into LAB helped that with ridiculously steep curves in a and b to pull out reds, greens, blues and yellows. Then a reduction to 10% opacity provided just enough variation to make it interesting.

hi, all

I might be too late to reply this post.

Realaqu

I like the skin tone a lot, Realaqu. I would soften the difference in luminosity between the neck and cheek even more and I would get rid of the sunglass line around her eye.

Pierre

Hi, Pierre,

Thanks for the inputs. it does look ugly when I look at it again.

Realaqu

Maybe I was off base with my posted try. But thought the intent was to really get rid of the tonal extremes. i.e the blemishes and the rosey cheeks. As well as reduce the sunglass tan lines.

I noticed in my original post that the sharpening with Smart Sharpen seemed to have left a lot of "texture" which surprises me as I didn't think the levels were very high. Anyhow, an excuse to try another one corrected mostly in LAB which I'm slowly getting a grasp on with Margulis' new book. I tried not to be heavy handed but did want to improve shadow highlight in the skin. I balanced the skin highlights to equal amounts of magenta/yellow and allowed the neck region to stay slightly more yellow than my original post. I did a slight sharpening of the L channel and 3% surface blur of a and b channel. Made very small changes to the curves in a and b and finally converted to CMYK and sharpened the K channel.

Cheers

Dave