Color correction on skin and full photo

[Anneke]

I'm working on a photo of the lipstickfetisch collection and I'm having a hard time trying to get the skin colors right. I know about the fact that yellow and red should have about the same % (yellow bit more) and cyan should be about 1/4 to 1/3 of that, but when I try to do that, she turns out so reddish.
Can someone help me with it?
Either in RGB, CMYK, or Lab, as long as you give me your curves-numbers (like, really the numbers, not 'a bit up' or so, because I tried already a lot), I can follow, but I don't seem to find the right approach.

Al the other retouching goes rather well (love D&B!), it's only the color correction.

The big photo is here.

[Aleksman71]

Hope this helps.

[Anneke]

I'm not even sure what that is!
(I'm a PS chick by the way )

[Aleksman71]

Sorry I have Corel PSP,but first find white balance (first image)
than color balance,(2. image)
and Hue saturation Lightnes and edit only red chanell(3. image)
Or wait for some PS guy to explain how.

[BROWNEE]

Here is my try

[Anneke]

Originally Posted by Aleksman71

Or wait for some PS guy to explain how.

Thanks for your time, but I doesn't look like something I can recreate in PS.
Anyone else?

(Brownee, yours looks way (and I mean way!) to blurry, in my humble opinion.)

[Daviskw]

Hi there

Skin is soooo subjective..and there is not an exact formula or procedure. You are using the right guidelines but of course they are just guides. In the end it is whats pleasing to you and your client. Your skin could be true but the makeup or lighting may be off..so just overall tweaking of color may not be enough.

In my example below I just used a selective color adjustment layer and in Reds I set the black slider to -49 and the yellow to -4. In Yellows I set the yellow to -14 and the magenta to +11.

I Slightly lightened the over all picture with a brightness/ contrast adjustment layer.

Just me but I still thought the right cheek was too dark compared to the rest of the face...the magenta's I think were in the 50 percent range there while in the forehead they were around 25 or so..If I remember right. So I made a small selection of the cheek area and used curves to reduce magenta and cyan and yellow proportionately. Then I used the mask to blend in.

I did lighten some around the eyes and added a small amount of contrast.

Butch

[mayday]

This image has several bad casts!
I would suggest a mix of selective colour & curves.
The problem with removing the blue cast in RGB with a curve is that when you decrease the red channel the values of the green will rise causing the red cast you mentioned. You need to do some work on all 3 channels.

[Anneke]

Does this look any good?

I'm already somewhere in the D&B-process too.

[Daviskw]

Looks great to me...but how does it look to you?

Butch

[mayday]

Yea thats better maybe still a bit cool not much.
You should also fix the fly-away hairs

[Verywierd]

Have you tried using the PS "variations" function (Image/Adjustments/Variations) to help you pick a baseline skin tone that you like to start with rather than going by numbers?

[Anneke]

Originally Posted by mayday

Yea thats better maybe still a bit cool not much.
You should also fix the fly-away hairs

Will do that fore sure, just didn't get there yet.

Originally Posted by Verywierd

Have you tried using the PS "variations" function (Image/Adjustments/Variations) to help you pick a baseline skin tone that you like to start with rather than going by numbers?

Will sure look into that too, thanks!

[bazza64]

HI Anneke,

First I got rid of the color cast, in cs3.
Then I set the white balance.
Duplicate layer.
Filter>blur>average.(this shows you the color that's causing the cast, thanks to Swampy's tutorial)
Image>adjustments>invert (ctrl-I on pc) this shows you the color to neutralize the cast.(oposite side of the color wheel)
now set the layer blending mode to soft light.
Then I set the white balance with levels, sampled the black of her iris with the blackpoint eye dropper. then adjusted the gamma (middle slider)

Now if you want to you can adjust the skin color to your liking with hue/sat, levels, curves etc.,
The point i'm trying to make is that if you adjust your white balance on any photo first, it is much easier to adjust your photo the way you want it from that point on.

As you know there are many ways to do the same thing in cs3, this is just one way.
Hope this helps!
Barry.

[DiamondsDr47]

Hi, this image is underexposed (intentionally or not), second it’s processed jpeg from the camera maybe not, numbers just a reference, color space? Profile? Output? And you need to know where you want to bring this image... here is my sample exposure, global, and one local adjustment(in my view).
global plus one local.jpg

[hoanggiapr]

hi
I'm newbe

[philbach]

Using Photoshop CS3 there are a number of ways to correct the color.

I first used Curves to increase contrast.

Next like Very Weird Suggested I used Image Adjustments/Variations and increased the Blue and the lightness by one click

Then using a selective color adjustment layer I decreased the yellow some.

[pixelzombie]

if you were already in curves why didn't you also do the cast corrections?

[m@ndy]

Hi all,

First posting here.

I used this tutorial and the colours by numbers correction with this video.

Fast becoming addicted to this forum, thanks to every for their willingness to share.

before-after-proretouch.jpg

[suzzie12]

What you seemed to be asking for are actual skin numbers.

Heres what I have done and im sure you could do it.

Everybody has a different taste as to what skin color looks the best...so..find 10 images that have the family of skin tones you are after...mens magazines seem to have a range of skin tones that is somewhat universal and fairly narrow in number range.

In photoshop, I have used the "color sampler tool" next to the eyedropper tool in the main menu. This allows you to place down droppers and get numerical readouts in the "Windows>info tool" pallete.

Now bring in your 10 prettiest girls...and sample the highlight (not white) skin tone, the median skin tone, the cheek color tone, and the shadow tone.

Now...you have numbers for each kind of skin on a face. Ive made up a visual color palette with swatches of these skin tones by family...and now all I have to do if I want a blond, or oriental cast to my colorings...is pull up that file...dab a little paint from the swatches, and paint with the brush set to color. Voila, The reason you sample the 5 colors is that the face has more range than just one color...you paint the highlight color on that parts of the face, the cheeks on that part and then shadows in the edges.

Dont just paint with the regular brush...do it on a separate layer with the layer set to "color" blend mode...so the coloring becomes non destructive and doesnt obscure any small facial details

Hope this helps some.

Suzzie

[suzzie12]

Also, Its awesome to just sometimes do a non destructive step like this...

Go to the adjustment layers in the Layers Pallette...and choose the "Photo Filter Adjustment layer"

This now allows you to change the whole look and feel of the skin color as if you put a glass filter in front of your camera lens...it has the warming filter and other colors...but the one I like is the custom color.

Just dab a color from a skin pallette from above, or another skin image you like, or just try any skin looking kind of color...and this filter puts up a color correction that you can see real time, and its non destructive, which means, it doesnt clog up the textures below it. You can experiment with the color and the percentage of strength of the filter if you want to warm up skin tones, or make them more olive, or add a more yellow or orange component to the existing skin tones.

[m@ndy]

Suzzie - thanks for the tip - I've been using a poor man's version of that method and wondered why the faces become plasticky.

Also, I use the curvemeister plug-in as it does the job for you with their skin pins. I took one of their courses and it moved my learning forward immensely, as well as being good fun.

thanks Mandy

[fellipedepaula]

my first try in here, please tell me what you guys think about it!

Thanks!