Getting skin tones right?

[pindaro]

hello.

lovely pic.

1) autolavels then fade to about 10%
2) desaturate a bit
3) sharpen
4) filled a layer with blue and overlayed about 5%

cheers

[byRo]

Originally Posted by stosh7

.....the basic Caucasian skin color of 80 -20 - 20 (L - A - B).

I prefer to use relative numbers for A and B instead, in this case A=B, and let the circumstances decide the value to be used.

Actually, I was just going to comment that I use B with 4 to 8 points more than A, but then I remembered that you said Caucasian so A=B is about right.
It's for Latin skin (like here in Brazil) that B is slightly higher (i.e. yellower).

Rô

[stosh7]

I agree with you Rô, skin tones vary by race and even more so within the same photo. My decision is always - to which part of the face or body part to apply the metric. Averaging over a wider area seems to make sense, but the fine tuning always resolves to subjective tweaking. The cook book methods only take you to the general area, the rest is up to l'ouvre.

Stosh

[freddyfries]

I like the results from everyone it really has been informative. I like to try to keep the background white. So layer fills for me don't really work. The LAB colour technique certainly sounds interesting I shall now have a go at that. One question however, how is an image affected when it is swapped between different modes (eg RGB to LAB or CMYK?) am I degrading my image each time I convert it (I was some how under the impression that this was the case!)

[freddyfries]

Oh something else that effects my workflow is that I shoot all pictures using RAW, which is then converted using a raw convertor program such as CaptureOne or I am currently experimenting with Lightroom. This means that the inital conversion and tweeking of the pictures curves is carried out before I play around in Photoshop (therefore I guess the "yellow" damage has already been done, eg As far as I am aware I cannot work in LAB mode) so I guess I then have to fix it in Photoshop. Sounds to me rather like I am doing something wrong here! This is not such a good workflow, or is it normal?

[stosh7]

Hi FF:

No need to worry about file Degradation converting back and forth to/from LAB in PS. Just be certain the use Image>Mode>Convert to Profile command and select LAB, CMYK, sRGB or whatever, from the listing. Many studies have proven that the conversion is lossless, having converted back and forth thousands of times in the testing. A good primer onLAB is "Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace" by Dan Margulis $20 at Amazon.com.

So far as workflow from RAW, I would set the software preferences, in whichever is your program choice, to do a minimum of enhancement and adjustment and depend upon your own post processing skills to yield the desired results. Control is everything and this workflow will allow you the most flexibility.

Just one man's opinion.

Stosh

[superkoax]

a quick guide to get nice skin tone is tou do this:

- copy pivture to new layer
-go to blur-avarage
-invert the avarage colour
-change blending to screen
-adjust opacity

a failry quick and nice way to do an easy adjustment! but it's more of quick lazy one, not that correct one


Gerry