Yellow skin

[solitear]

Thanks Shuga...... here are the steps for the second pic.... I use PS .....

1. Used the color sample tool and clicked on the most yellow part of the skin
this should now be your foreground color.

2. Create a new blank layer over your picture and go Edit > Fill > Foreground Color (leaving blend mode here to normal and 100% opacity) don't preserve transparency, click OK

3. On this layer (which should be a solid yellow/ skin color) do a Ctrl + I to inverse that color (now should be a solid dark blue color)

4. Set the blend mode of this layer to Soft Light and adjust opacity

5. I wanted to get rid of some of the highlights so I created a new blank layer over this and painted with my brush in Overlay mode at 27% opacity sampling often by Alt + clicking which changes your paint color quickly.

6. After covering highlighted areas with paint I went Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur to completely smooth any streaking.... your colors will probably be too bright so .....

7. Go to Layers > Adjustments > Hue/Sat and lower the lightness slider to darken the color, click OK

8. In layers palette adj. the opacity and use the eraser to clean up any "overspray" from the blurring.....

9. Flattened the image and that's it !

oxoox
Beth

[solitear]

Sorry this is so long but thought it would be cleaner to break them up in separate posts....... this is for the third picture (not the one of your nephew)

1. Went to Layers > Adjustments > Color Balance and clicked on Midtones

2. Pushed the slider towards the color blue until happy with color, clicked Ok

3. Then I did a skin de-grunge (sounds gross but smoothes skin in a natural way) tutorial written by a RetouchPRO pro byRo found below:

The Quick Degrunge Technique
(at long last)

1) Make a duplicate layer;

2) Open the Gaussian blur filter and change the radius until the grunge just becomes invisible. Be careful here, getting the radius right is very important. Note the radius and cancel the filter;

3) Apply the High-pass filter at the radius you just noted down;

4) Apply the Gaussian blur on this layer at 1/3 of the radius;

5) Invert the layer (<Ctrl><I>), set the blending to Linear Light and the opacity to 50%;

6) Apply a Hide-all mask and paint white where you want to degrunge.

That's it.......... (my husband had to tell me that in step 4 above re: 1/3 of the radius just meant that I multiplied whatever number I used for the High-pass radius by .33) GAaaaaahhhh........ so embarrassing ......

That's what I love about this forum...... so many talented, generous people to learn from......

oxoxox
Beth

PS. Kraelin (Craig) is a PSP pro and could probably translate - others here are, too...... he's just the first that came to mind and a dear heart!

[lkroll]

Assuming that the shirt is red (not violet), I used the color picker and found that the color was around 30% too green and 40% too blue, so I used the channel mixer (on duplicate layer) and adjusted the opacities down on the Green and Blue channels accordingly. I set the resulting layer to Hue and flattened. It looks like your camera is amplifying the greens and blues more then it should (or attenuating the red depending on your perspective).

[solitear]

Hey Ikroll...... when you say you used the color picker..... were you judging the numbers by a sort of formula???? Your method is new territory for me but, judging by your results, I'd really like to learn it since the results are excellent !! Even if you could just point me in some direction I'd appreciate it...

Beth

[pepperspray]

I found this link of PSP retouching techniques: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pai...orialsretouch/

Hope that helps.

[Stretch]

Here's my take on this.

I used skin by the numbers technique from http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=191 (subscription)

The technique uses CYMK and Curves to adjust skin color. See attached scren print.

1. Use Color Sample tool to select the cheek (stay away from the shiny portion).
2. In the Info palette change to CYMK for the selected color cample.
3. Bring up the Curves layer.
4. Select the RGB channel in Curves. Click on the selected Color Sample portion of the skin will show you where on the Curves graph to start. Keep an eye on the Info palette. Adjust K to a value of 0.
5. Select Blue Channel in Curves, adjust Yellow so that its value is close to Magenta and slightly higher (1 to 2 value)
6. Select Red Channel in Curves and adjust Cyan to a value about 20%-33% of Yellow or Magenta.
7. Click OK in Curves.

So basically the formula is:
K= 0
Y= M with Y slightly higher
C= 1/5 - 1/3 of Y or M

This has worked well for me. Takes the guess work out for a "by the number" kind of guy like myself.

Best Regards,

Dan

[solitear]

Dan...... what an awesome job you did..... not only the results you got but you gave very clear step by step instructions, too..... I want to try this myself.....

I tend to be one who just 'eyeballs' the colors; however, the longer I sit and look at something I'm working on the more distorted those colors become.... sometimes shockingly so....... I like knowing there's somewhat of a formula for those things it's just the first time I've seen it presented so well..... thank you!

Beth

[lkroll]

Originally Posted by solitear

Hey Ikroll...... when you say you used the color picker..... were you judging the numbers by a sort of formula???? Your method is new territory for me but, judging by your results, I'd really like to learn it since the results are excellent !! Even if you could just point me in some direction I'd appreciate it...

Beth

I'm a feeler when it comes to things like this. I used color picker on a saturated area on the shirt. Assumed it was pure red and anything outside of that (blue and green) I negatively compensated by around that amount; pure feel. I tend to try to recreate the wheel when it comes to retouching, so, even though someone else may have come up with this method, I have no idea who. Still not perfect since I ended up setting the adjusted layer to Hue to get the result, but who says there is not more then one way to skin a cat.

[solitear]

Wow......OK....... sort of like my cheesy way of sampling the offending color cast and filling a new blank layer with it then inverting it and setting the blend mode to soft light....... I mean...... mine is hugely global and anyone or anything in the shot is going to get a dose of it.......

Yours really is a feel thing and more fine tuned than my approach..... I'm still going to play around with what you've written but, knowing me, I'll have to take a bunch of breaks or wind up with everything all out of whack.....

Too bad there hasn't been some photo that's been created to 'cleanse the palette' so to speak when working with colors for extended periods of time.....like sniffing coffee beans between smelling perfume samples....... hey.... now that's an idea......

Thanks for the info.

oxoxo
Beth