Flesh tone experts - help!

[Rexx]

When I checked the settings for my calibration profile further up this thread, the monitor lost its profile, and I've been working all day on who knows what ... Gamma 3???

My "final" picture is not final, way too dark!

So to those of you who found it too dark, you were perfectly right

Too late - it's bedtime. Saga not finished yet.

[Rexx]

It's morning again. I'm on the correct profile. The curve should be pulled considerably up instead of slightly down. Aaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhh.

Another thought that occurred to me (during the night?): I have calibrated for a white point of 6500 K because I thought white at 5600 K looked yellow. This means that if all of you others have calibrated for 5600 K white, it means your images will appear to you to have slightly more yellow, while they will appear to me to have slightly more blue. This can explain my perception of most of the images being off.

Did you know that visible light encompasses only one octave? Audible sound on the other hand, encompasss at least 10 octaves.

[philbach]

I sure didn't know that light encompasses only one Octave. I don't even know what an octave is to be honest with you.

I downloaded your picture because it looked too yellow. The info palette revealed that the skin tones showed that the Yellow was 56% and the Magenta was 30%. After converting to cymk mode I decreased the yellow to 45% and increased the magenta to 37%. Using a HSL adjustment layer I slightly decreased the saturation. I desaturated and slightly brightened the whites of her eyes (they looked bloodshot.).

The result is still not quite right but there is less yellow.

[kiska]

I think an octave is 8 keys on the piano.

[Duv]

I would agree with Phil that there is too much yellow. I run at 6500 also and I'm getting 50 yellow and 34 magenta on #1 marker.
I narrowed the range to 42 yellow, 37 magenta. Pulled down the black channel in CMYK to change the value from 3 to 2. I don't think you would normally see any black in causcasian skin. I must say Vegard that it is looking much better. One question though. I don't see any markers on the Iris. Did you balance this out as it has a strong known black value?

Cheers
Dave

[venivedi]

Originally Posted by Rexx

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?

The former estimation is right.
I'm just back from my daily work.(1:22 a.m)

Though having attached the layer pallette screen shot, I'm sorry for my poor English.(It seems that making a post in English take much time than retouching a photo...at least in my case )

in my case...
1. Basic steps to get a little darkened(?) image
- darken red channel with Apply Image :
@ first time...source : red, destination : red, multiply, about 30% , mask : red channel
@ second time..." ", mask : green channel, multiply, about 10%
@ Duplicate the file-->convert to Lab mode-->adjust curves on L channel-->copy the L channel to the original file-->change layer blending mode to Luminosity
2. color balance adjustment layers with mask
...
3. Duplicate the original-->Assign Profile(nDigital)-->copied it to the original(converted profiles)-->layer blending mode set to Normal-->added layer mask
That's about it. In fact, I experimented with I haven't tried before, so I can't remind about the steps anymore.

You did good work, too. um...thanks for your compliment.

p.s. BTW, I've just read whole posts on this thread. It touched on 'monitor calibration'. I set the white point 7,500K. Sometimes I can't sure about the outcome's colors of mine. )

[nkollias]

Try_1: Image>Duplicate --> Set (to duplicate) Mode>LAB color go to Chanels--> Click to view only the Lightness --> then Copy All (of Lightness Chanell) and Paste As New Layer into first (RGB) pic. Then Set mode to this Layer --> Color (about 35-40%).

Try_2: Cmnd(Ctrl)+Alt+~ --> Cmnd(Ctrl)+J to make the selection a new layer and set layer to Saturation (100%) --> go to Brightness/Contrast and set Contrast to -55.

Hope that helps

[Rexx]

Originally Posted by kiska

I think an octave is 8 keys on the piano.

An octave in audible sound is the "distance" between two tones where one has double the frequency of the other. On a piano it is the distance between two occurrences of the key pattern - 8 white keys. The octaves of audible sound are
16-32-64-128-256-512-1024-2048-4096-8192-16384 Hz. That makes 10 octaves. Children and young people (until their hearing has been destroyed by loud music) can hear another octave above that, but small ears have problems with the lower octaves, so we're roughly in the 10 octaves range. The ordinary CD cuts everything at 22,050 Hz. I can only hear up to 13,000 Hz.

Now a doubling of the frequency means a halving of the wavelength, and visible light lies in the range of 400-750 nm, in other words, approximately one octave. If our eyes were as good as our ears, we would be able to see heat (like The Predator) and X-Ray (like Superman)...

Sorry, too busy to look at your efforts today. I will try to check in again tomorrow afternoon.

[Rexx]

Originally Posted by Duv

I would agree with Phil that there is too much yellow.

Yours is definitely too ... red? And I agree, mine is too yellow now that I look at it with fresh eyes. So what is the obvious conclusion?

I layered my yellow one on top of your red one with an opacity of around 30%. Try it.

Originally Posted by Duv

One question though. I don't see any markers on the Iris. Did you balance this out as it has a strong known black value?

Do the markers survive the Save As JPEG???? Yes, I balanced with the pupil, no marker though.

[Duv]

I usually run my images with higher yellow but on this my personal preference only is slightly redder to offset the green eyes. On the other hand, your creative overlay produces an almost classic skin tone value for caucasian. Yellow typically should be between 1/5 and 1/3 more than magenta according to Eismann. You come in at 1/4. Plus the amount of cyan works well. Glad you finally got there.

Cheers
Dave

[kiska]

" One stop pShopping'! This needs further adjustment, but I got this far with one step. A Napp tut.
Image>adjustments>match color
Check neutralize
Source> your image

Then tweak the sliders

[Flora]

Hi Kiska,

... Thanks for the great Tip!!! .... I tried it on other pictures as well and it works very well!!!!

[kiska]

I don't know why. But it DOES help. Especially on certain images. Who would have 'thunk' it?

[venivedi]

Ah, I almost forgot about Match Color. Thanks for the tip, kiska

[glikster]

I started off using Apply Image with the Green channel. I can supply more info if it's wanted.