Flesh tone experts - help!

[Hephaestos]

Went through my standard routine on this one, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't; I think it may have worked this time.

Levels on each of R, G and B, bringing the sliders on each to where the histogram starts rising from the deck. This cleared most of the problem.

Then I sampled from the whites of her eyes with the dropper, should be white (gray) but came up with red too high and blue a bit too low, so I evened these up by adjusting the brightness on the separate channels.

[Gary Richardson]

Thanks Janet, I was just looking for a quick, simple way to do this by the numbers. Usually I work by eye.

[Rexx]

Thanks, thanks and thanks!

Here, I snore away while you're all hard at work

First, about my setup. I'm on MacOS X with a rather expensive Viewsonic VX-2000 monitor. You Mac users out there know you can calibrate it with an OS utility, which is what I've done. My white point is D65, 6500 K, and I use a PC gamma of 2.2 instead of the Mac Gamma of 1.8. A couple of weeks from now I will get a real Gretag bug to hang on the monitor :-)

I changed my gamma from the standard 1.8 Mac setting to the standard Win 2.2 setting after looking at some of my images on the peecees at work. Ghastly, washed-out.

I can easily see all of the stepwedge on top of this window, except I have to look hard to see the difference between the two leftmost samples. It's morning here now and the sun is in my back; will soon reach my monitor.

As to the results of your labour I am very grateful for all the tips regarding workflow and especially the flesh tone swatch. I'll have to look around for it. Several of you reached an "almost" good result with only a few steps, where I had used 2-3 hours.

It is unfair to name a "winner", but I can tell you how it looks on my monitor in order of posting, which is totally subjective. I think that all of those who haven't tried to repair the red channel, will get an overexposed looking result?

I hope you all understand that my comments are not meant as critique, but only how my "colour-blind" eyes see the result on my monitor. I am really really not good at colours, honestly!

Original
Yellow and flat, but great eyes!

Stroker
Almost. Slightly overexposed, but then again, the original red channel is severely blown. I'm amazed at how quickly Stroker could "get there".

Janet
Red, overexposed

Ken
Is that red or is it cyan? Sunburn, at least. Overexposed

Duv
#1 The winner. #2 No, too much ... cyan? And you found BLACK!

Gary
Looks more overexposed than any of the rest. Are you a 1.8 Gamma guy?

Hephaestos
I think the colours might have been good, had it not been so overexposed. Another Mac user?

I promised my wife I would only spend two hours on this image. I think I'll tell her that I really meant two hours per day...

The sun reached my monitor now, so I cannot do any "real" work for some time, but I will check out all of your tips. If I ever reach a result that I'm happy with.... I will post it here. It might be interesting to hear how it will look on your monitors.

Again, thanks folks!

[philbach]

Well the results are so so but the technique was fast.

1.) Copy the BackGround Layer

2.) Adjustment Levels. Black eyedropper on the left pupil and white
eyedropper on the highlight (light reflection) on the right eye (iris).

3.) Image Adjustments/ Auto Color

[Stroker]

I don't mind critiques. Like you said, subjective.
Personally, I don't have eyes for this kind of thing.
Well, I do, but not anywhere near as critical like a real photographer.
It easy for me to wash-out a photo or pump up the contrast too much.

To fix the over-exposure in mine, I would just go to the Lum/Curves and tweak the Curves a bit more. Probably make it more of an 'S' shape.

Don't forget that the middle slider in Levels is a gamma slider.
Might help. I don't know.

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Rex, I'm working on an LCD screen at the moment. There was a little outside light on the screen when I worked on your image, I think thats what's thrown things. I've upped contrast a little, and dimmed exposure, how does this one post?

[Hephaestos]

Hi Rexx!

Originally Posted by Rexx

Hephaestos
I think the colours might have been good, had it not been so overexposed. Another Mac user?

Yes I am on a Mac. And I've been having some issues with monitor calibration, which is one reason I submitted to this, to see how far off it really is. I really don't have a knack for getting it right I'm afraid.

You're also right about the red channel in the original having too much 255 in it; I didn't even notice on the first go-around. I'll fool with it some more today with that in mind.

[byRo]

I was going to apply my little Color-Declipping tutorial (which I think would be regarded here as cheating) but in the process I observed that the colour problems are different in the light and dark regions. The lights being too yellow and the darks being too red. That way it's difficult to apply a general fix to the image.

(Disclaimer - I am not a colour expert)- Applied channel mixer with 20/80/-10 monochrome to get a good greyscale image;
- Mixed this back in as luminosity;
- Selected luminosity (<ctrl><alt><~>) and used as mask for a Hue/Saturation layer, selected "yellows" and eye-dropped from the bright forehead, set Hue -10 and Saturation -10;
- Copied this layer, inverted the mask, cleared the settings <alt><Reset>, selected Reds and eye-dropped from the red shadows, set Hue +20, saturation -30 (thus balancing light/dark areas);
- Added another H/S layer, without a mask, setting Hue -7, saturation -22;
- Levels layer, Auto "Enhance per channel contrast", backed off opacity to 60%;
- byRo Brightness/Contrast, brightness -10 contrast +10.

Phew!
Rô

[Rexx]

I also have this 3%-5% Yellow over Magenta in the book in front of me, but I cannot for the life of me make this happen. Whenever I adjust a curve or three so that this ratio is getting close, the face looks like something out of a horror movie.

As I said, I have some good shots of her daughter in sunshine. I pulled them up side by side, and even if the readouts were close, the daughter looked lovely and the mother ... well...

Apart from all the jokes you can make on that one, I started looking at the background. The daughter was shot against a blue autumn sky, whilst the mother had this absolutely incredibly ugly wall behind her.

So I changed the colour of the wall... That did the trick.

My steps.
1) Noise Ninja on Blue channel only
2) Noise Ninja again on all channels
3) Paint away slits in ugly wall
4) Repair Red channel as 70% Red, 20% Green to gain some contrast
5) Reduce Green and Blue to 90% as well
6) Use Levels to balance RGB slightly
7) Hue/Sat with a Mask to de-sat hair and other dark areas. Too red
8) Fake shadow on wall, using adj level and mask
9) Slight Hue/Sat correction
10) Tiny masked adj layer to brighten up green eye in the shade
11) Curves for a slightly darker image
12) Hue/Sat to change colour of abominable wall

All of the above in separate layers of course. No USM.

This will not make it to the cover of Vogue, but considering the rather hopeless starting point, I think this is not too bad. Interestingly, the flesh tones are not what the book says they should be, but on my monitor, this looks ok.

Lessons learned:
- Levels are also useful, not only Curves
- CMYK flesh values are not hewn in stone
- Background severely corrupts your colour sight
- Stick to sunlight or flash

Now how does this look on your monitors?

A heartfelt Thank You! to all who volunteered to help. I was going to give up, but then I saw what could be achieved.

[Rexx]

Aha. It was too large. Re-compress...

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Rexx

Lessons learned:
...- CMYK flesh values are not hewn in stone
....

To me that's the most important. Must be one of those things our little brains do automatically when we look at an image. Doesn't matter much what the numbers say - if it looks wrong, it is wrong.

Thanks Rexx for an interesting thread.
Rô

[Hephaestos]

Just finished recalibrating my monitor, and Rexx's second attempt looks way too dark on it. (The option for "native gamma" came up as 2.1, so I went with that.) I put a screen layer copy on top, and it looked better to me.

Going by what Ro noticed, I then used color balance to bump the red down on shadows and the yellow down on highlights. Also bumped red and green down in the midtones. Does this look as bad on other people's monitors as I suspect it does?

[Rexx]

Originally Posted by Hephaestos

Just finished recalibrating my monitor, and Rexx's second attempt looks way too dark on it.

This has also struck me. I think every attempt here has looked too bright! But when looking at other faces I have shot, even from that same evening, same camera, they all look lighter.

Originally Posted by Hephaestos

I put a screen layer copy on top, and it looked better to me.

Yes, my standard trick for exposure compensation.

Originally Posted by Hephaestos

Does this look as bad on other people's monitors as I suspect it does?

Yes
It looks blue here. But I think the main reason for that is her hair. I took care to desat the hair. When you tweaked the overall colour balance you must have re-introduced colour (blue) to her hair. But her lips look violet. That cannot be right?

I think it's time I get that Gretag bug... My colleague discovered a course on colour management, and the bug goes with it.

[venivedi]

I just want to participate.

[Rexx]

Originally Posted by venivedi

I just want to participate.

Seoul... you're 10? hours ahead of me. Haven't you gone to bed yet or are you up extremely early?

Apart from that, you're apparently the only one around here with a monitor calibrated the same as mine. That one looks better than mine! You were able to preserve the structure of the skin. This looks real!

What about a short narrative?