Evening out skin tones

[fryday]

Hi everyone,

I've just finished a retouch and after looking at the image for a while i noticed that there's a grayish color in the skin tones. If you have a look at this image

http://fryday.deviantart.com/art/Fac...uch-2-98177694

to the left and right side of her lips the skin color is noticably greyer then the rest. I was wondering what methods you can use to get around this. thanks for your help.

[Hendrik]

I'm currently not on a good display. so I can't see it, but ...

can you make a reading of a good piece of skin. Make a curves adjustment layer and take a measurement of the bad skin tones and type the good tones into the out box. Low opacity/flow brushing the good tones into the bad areas. This is what I should try as a first step. You can even over-correct a bit and lower the opcity of the layer.

[041567970]

Hey hendrik, can you please explain the technique with curves more? What measurements? What out box? That would be really helpful!

[Daviskw]

Hi there

It just seemed to me that you have too much cyan in the skin tones. I reduced the cyan with a curves adjustment.

I then used a brightness/contrast layer in color mode to lighten the gray in the skin tone.

Butch

[0lBaldy]

This link might help some: skin tone

[TommyO]

I would agree with Butch, in that the spots you describe are higher in Cyan by about 10%. I'm not sure what was wrong with the tonality of the original, maybe nothing. I happen to like the original better regarding color/tone, except for those spots.

The original needed only slight blemish & wrinkle removal. I would have left the creases around the mouth; without them her mouth seems too full or fake.

[Hendrik]

Originally Posted by 0lBaldy

This link might help some: skin tone

It's a nice tutorial. I don't agree with the conversion to CMYK. Unnecessary degradation of your image. Simply do the same with RGB channels and watch your CMYK values closely while making adjustments.

@041567970: it's simple. Take a reading of the good values with your eyedropper (5x5 pixels or higher). Write the values down. Take a reading from the good skin. Write values down. Inside the curves window, put the R,G or B values of the bad skin in the IN box and the good values in the OUT box.