Giving skin warmth when it was originally dead?

[Solstice]

If you are presented with a beauty shot with dead skin, meaning one without warmth, how can warmth be added more realistically?

I am not talking about glow (d/b, highlight painting) but adding warm tones in the skin.

I've always used the technique where you create a new layer and sample a neutral color tone in her skin (+5 to 10 brightness of sampled tone) and fill the layer in. Then use a low opacity hard light with a layer mask (exposing just skin) till it looks natural.

Are there any good tutorials out there for this? I would like to know more ways that I can use since each situation calls for a variance of techniques.

Thanks so much,

Sol

[Insensitive.]

I suggest playing with slective color and switching the image to LAB mode and playing with curves.

[mileeeeeeenaaaa]

what i did was sortof the same thing

i sampled a colour from the shadows of the skin
made it a fair bit darker
made a new layer above the beackground or whatever the last layer was
filled in the layer with the colour i picked
changed blending mode to soft light
fill in a layer mask with black
then paint with a white fuzzy brush and low opacity onto the skin and areas needing 'warmth'
i then turn down the opacity until it looks normal

then if needed i open the hue and saturation box and adjust the lightness so it is darker and adjust the hue/sat sliders as needed.

its not too different than your technique but i find it works on nearly every image i retouch.

also, dont forget to dodge and burn

[Solstice]

Originally Posted by mileeeeeeenaaaa

what i did was sortof the same thing

i sampled a colour from the shadows of the skin
made it a fair bit darker
made a new layer above the beackground or whatever the last layer was
filled in the layer with the colour i picked
changed blending mode to soft light
fill in a layer mask with black
then paint with a white fuzzy brush and low opacity onto the skin and areas needing 'warmth'
i then turn down the opacity until it looks normal

then if needed i open the hue and saturation box and adjust the lightness so it is darker and adjust the hue/sat sliders as needed.

its not too different than your technique but i find it works on nearly every image i retouch.

also, dont forget to dodge and burn

Thank you Layer masks are such a blessing!

[mileeeeeeenaaaa]

wow i made a huge mistake in my post:
instead of changing the blending mode to soft light,
change it to vivid light instead
it produces far better results, and you can turn the opacity down as much as you like rather than being limited as with soft light.

[Solstice]

Excellent! Thank you for posting that, I will be giving this a try next time, I used to use screen instead to brighten up tones. I may do a second layer with vivid light in conjunction at a lower opacity and see how that goes.

[0lBaldy]

You might try looking in the Tutorial section

One that may help is "Wet Skin"

[ray12]

Go to a portrait that has the skin tones you like and are looking for.

There are usually 5 different skin tones in an image that you will need to pick up... to get a realistic look. Get color patches/swatches from the highlight area (not the white highlight area...but near white, with some flesh tone in it), forehead skin color, the mid tone skin color (the base skin tone), the warm cheek color, the darker flesh, and the shadow flesh color (not black...but the darkest looking flesh tone).

When you have these swatches, then pick one up, and paint in "color mode" in the brush options area, use low 20% opacity, and place it in a separate layer above your image, with the blend mode on the layer ALSO set to "color" blend mode. Then paint with this color/color combination in the respective areas from above. Highlight in highlight area...warm cheek color on the cheeks etc. This will give your skin tone some accuracy and especially transparency... so it does not look opaque and obscure all the fessh details below it. Using several colors will also give it some tonal range, so it does not all look like the same color. Using 4-6 colors borrowed from another image...usually gives you a fairly decent look.

There are other things to do to fine tune this...but this is usually a great start.

Ray 12