Better facial colorization

[Doug Nelson]

Study good color portraits of people. You'll see that faces have many different colors. I'll normally make the entire face flesh colored (of course since I'm using my selections the eyes, lips, jewelry, etc. are unaffected) then add some reddish (usually) highlights to the cheeks, forehead, and ears (this is where the studying comes in). After I'm done with that I'll move onto the other masked areas, since the face takes the longest.

[Gary Richardson]

As an addition to this, try setting a mirror at the side of your screen. In my case the views not too pretty, but you can see where the highlights and shadows are on a face, and how they affect the basic tone of the skin. This of course will vary with lighting intensity and angle, but an anglepoise lamp can be moved around to give some idea.

[Vikki]

When I do colorings, I look for photographs that have similar lighting and settings.