hi. Could anyone share with me some RGB values for avarege caucasian children. excuse me for my poor english. thanks in advance :vampire:

Hi annacarina,

welcome to RetouchPRO!! :pleased: ..

here are Katrin Eismann skin colours guidelines:

Mode CMYK

* in light skinned babies, yellow and magenta are equal,

* In adults, yellow is up to 35% greater than magenta,

* Cyan makes people look tanner and darker,

* Only people with very dark skin should have noticeable amount of black ink in their skin tones.

Hope this helps...

hi and thanks. Nice to be with you. But why cmyk colors. Can the corrections be made in RGB. ive downloaded some videotutorials from Radiantvista by Mark Johnson and he uses RGB values from exactly K.Eismann when he is correcting for skin colors. Whats the big differece between doing them in cmyk vs. RGB. Thanks

hi and thanks. Nice to be with you. But why cmyk colors. Can the corrections be made in RGB. ive downloaded some videotutorials from Radiantvista by Mark Johnson and he uses RGB values from exactly K.Eismann when he is correcting for skin colors. Whats the big differece between doing them in cmyk vs. RGB. Thanks

Yes, RGB values can certainly be used, and RGB can roughly be treated like CMY in terms of the actual color moves. However, I find it far more intuitive to set my info palette to CMYK regardless of the actual color space, for a couple of reasons.

One is purely personal: I learned color back in the days when CMYK was king and most image work was destined for a press of one sort or another. I think more clearly in CMYK. But that's not a bad thing, particularly with skin tones. Because the black values are siphoned off into their own channel, the CMY readouts are far more precise in terms of the actual color. As Flora pointed out, black values shouldn't really figure into skin tones except in heavy shadows and extremely dark African-American tones. Also, it's easier to conceptualize CMYK values as percentages based on a scale of 0 - 100 as opposed to RGB's 0 - 255. When you think "Okay, magenta's reading 53%, and I want Cyan to come in around 20% of that," the math works in a straightforward manner and the Cyan value really will be lower (somewhere around 9-15%). It makes sense.

It's trickier to think in RGB. You can mentally substitute Green for Magenta, but if you read a value of 189 - G, your Red channel (comparable to Cyan) will be larger, not smaller. There's nothing to say you can't train yourself to think in that manner, and I've known many people who have been exposed only to web work who find CMYK arcane and impenitrable. But I think the argument for using CMYK values can be extended beyond mere preference and "It's what you learned."

thanks - gave me something to work with. :devil:

I don't have much experience with CMYK and I never looked at it the way you approached it. It sure makes sense... and surely the math is much easier.

You made me look at it under a totally different light.


Also, it's easier to conceptualize CMYK values as percentages based on a scale of 0 - 100 as opposed to RGB's 0 - 255. When you think "Okay, magenta's reading 53%, and I want Cyan to come in around 20% of that," the math works in a straightforward manner and the Cyan value really will be lower (somewhere around 9-15%). It makes sense.

There are some "color sampler" tools right above the magnify button on the tool palette in CS2. These 4 color sample dots can be placed anywhere on an image. If you use the "info tool" with them - you can read off the color values in RGB and CYMK or Lab for any skin tone you put them on.

I would go to Google and search their image database under "images" and put in "baby pictures". Copy some of the images that look like what you want - and then copy off the RGB values for yourself.

There is also an excellent plugin for Photoshop called "Skin-Tune". It allows you to modify flesh colors for any Nationality, World Region or Age. There are thousands of skin chips in the program and they are sorted and interactive - so you can dial-in the skin tone you are looking for and adjust it to your liking.

Ray

Using the info palette and numbers I have found to be much more effective than using ones eyes or monitor. I think it's important to learn the three major colorspaces so that you can look at a color and pretty much give a good estimate of what the numbers are. Since skintones are so difficult anyways, going with numbers is the best way to go. I was a strictly RGB guy for the longest time but have since picked up on CMYK and LAB as well and find those easier a lot of times.

Very good ideas - thanks again. regards

You can see skin tone codes in Manual Color Corection filter in
Jasc (Corel) PaintShop Pro.
Item in PaintSopPro 9 Adjust->Color Balance->Manual Color Correction

Preset target color==Skin tones