Tan Skin Retouching

[bkravchenko]

Anyone can give me tips on how to create a bronze skin tone like this. More specifically looking to learn how to do this in selective color.

Some like to sample a color from another image and use levels to match the RGB values on a sampled point from working image. That never worked for me, maybe I am doing it wrong.

I would like to know how to create that "high-end" retouched skin tone that they all seem to have. Thanks.


http://www.modelmayhem.com/pic.php?p...65&the_count=5

[mistermonday]

Welcome to Retouch Pro. I find that Selective Color is more of a color fine tuning tool. For these bronze skin tones you may find Hue/Sat adjustment layers are very effective because they can allow you to select very narrow or very wide ranges of colors and shift them accordingly if the tool is used properly. Also, with skin, I find it very effective to work in LAB color mode where there is a direct relationship between the color and the ratio of the B to A channels.
Regards, Murray

[bkravchenko]

Thanks for the reply. I have always read and heard that it is generally not a good idea to convert to LAB and then back to RGB since there is some information loss every time you make a conversion. Is that not true or is the loss not a significant amount?

When you make the adjustments in RGB and then make the same adjustments in LAB, do you notice a significant enhancement in LAB over RGB?

[mistermonday]

No this is not true. You would need to do the conversion about 1000 times before noticing any damage. You encounter very significant changes when you move between RGB and CMYK but not LAB.
LAB allows you to do a number of thing which are difficult or impossible to do in any other color space. One big differentiator of LAB is that it separates Color from Lightness which is very useful for some types of image adjustments. I find skin tone adjustments to be one of those things.
Regards, Murray

[bkravchenko]

I just tried it, you were right, the image looks better with the conversion in LAB.

I also played around and found that using color balance gives me an identical result (well, about 95% match). On caucasian skin, I would raise magenta about 2 and yellow about 8 for Highlights, Mid and Shadows.

Thanks for getting me in the right direction.

[bkravchenko]

One more thing, what about putting the layer in Luminosity? Is that comparable to LAB?

[mistermonday]

You are very welcome. You may also find a conventional curve is very effective at shifting skin tones. Just set one point on the A or B and move it appropriately up or down.
Regards, Murray