How to tan skin?

[Quantum3]

Hello people, I'm asked by a client to tan his skin. Any tip to do it?

Thanks in advance,

Mart

[edgework]

Try this as a starting point. Mask the skin, of course, and apply a Selective Color layer modifying Reds with +40Y, +25C and +10M (or something proportional, depending on the value of the initial skin tones.) Then add a curve layer in Luminosity mode and use a basic "S" curve adjustment on the RGB master curve, pushing it darker. If you want to get really clever, instead of the curve layer, Merge the skin to a new layer, dupe that to a separate file and convert to CMYK. Then, with a curve adjustment layer in Luminosity mode, jack up the contrast in the magenta channel. Merge down and pull it back to your original.

Should be a good place to start.

[rsphotocreation]

The thing I do to get a better tan, or to tan the skin: I create a new layer called "tan", then I apply a red 255 with an opacity set to 20% then I apply the color on the parts of the skin I wanna tan. After that I press ctrl+U to set the color in the orange and I increase the lights until I get something good.
Finally I change the blending mode to color or over settings depending of the photo. And I adjust the opacity.

Regards,

[mistermonday]

For tanning I prefer LAB color. Select the skin and save as selection or mask. For many images this is as simple as loading the luminosity of the R channel.
In LAB, there is a easy releationship between the A and B channels that controls the skin color. For tans a good ratio that works is to have the B channel approx 1.5 times the A channel, where the value of A is somewhere between 18 and 24 resulting in B being in the high 20's to mid 30's. The L Channel is then moved a little to control the darkness of the tan / skin. This method is not better than moving curves in RGB or CMYK but I find it easier aand more effective for me. I also find it more intuitive. The color is established with only 2 channels (A&B), both values are on the positive axis which eliminates having to worry about messing around with the Blue channel (for the most part), and the range window is fairly narrow.
Regards, Murray

[marek]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

For tanning I prefer LAB color. Select the skin and save as selection or mask. For many images this is as simple as loading the luminosity of the R channel.
In LAB, there is a easy releationship between the A and B channels that controls the skin color. For tans a good ratio that works is to have the B channel approx 1.5 times the A channel, where the value of A is somewhere between 18 and 24 resulting in B being in the high 20's to mid 30's. The L Channel is then moved a little to control the darkness of the tan / skin. This method is not better than moving curves in RGB or CMYK but I find it easier aand more effective for me. I also find it more intuitive. The color is established with only 2 channels (A&B), both values are on the positive axis which eliminates having to worry about messing around with the Blue channel (for the most part), and the range window is fairly narrow.
Regards, Murray

whats R channel?

[Quantum3]

Originally Posted by marek

whats R channel?

Red Channel ^^

[Quantum3]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

For tanning I prefer LAB color. Select the skin and save as selection or mask. For many images this is as simple as loading the luminosity of the R channel.
In LAB, there is a easy releationship between the A and B channels that controls the skin color. For tans a good ratio that works is to have the B channel approx 1.5 times the A channel, where the value of A is somewhere between 18 and 24 resulting in B being in the high 20's to mid 30's. The L Channel is then moved a little to control the darkness of the tan / skin. This method is not better than moving curves in RGB or CMYK but I find it easier aand more effective for me. I also find it more intuitive. The color is established with only 2 channels (A&B), both values are on the positive axis which eliminates having to worry about messing around with the Blue channel (for the most part), and the range window is fairly narrow.
Regards, Murray

Hey Murray, thanks a lot for this help. I'll try it!

[marek]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

For tanning I prefer LAB color. Select the skin and save as selection or mask. For many images this is as simple as loading the luminosity of the R channel.
In LAB, there is a easy releationship between the A and B channels that controls the skin color. For tans a good ratio that works is to have the B channel approx 1.5 times the A channel, where the value of A is somewhere between 18 and 24 resulting in B being in the high 20's to mid 30's. The L Channel is then moved a little to control the darkness of the tan / skin. This method is not better than moving curves in RGB or CMYK but I find it easier aand more effective for me. I also find it more intuitive. The color is established with only 2 channels (A&B), both values are on the positive axis which eliminates having to worry about messing around with the Blue channel (for the most part), and the range window is fairly narrow.
Regards, Murray

oh men i dont really get this... T_T feel so dumb... can you post step by step? thnx

[Quantum3]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

For tanning I prefer LAB color. Select the skin and save as selection or mask. For many images this is as simple as loading the luminosity of the R channel.
In LAB, there is a easy releationship between the A and B channels that controls the skin color. For tans a good ratio that works is to have the B channel approx 1.5 times the A channel, where the value of A is somewhere between 18 and 24 resulting in B being in the high 20's to mid 30's. The L Channel is then moved a little to control the darkness of the tan / skin. This method is not better than moving curves in RGB or CMYK but I find it easier aand more effective for me. I also find it more intuitive. The color is established with only 2 channels (A&B), both values are on the positive axis which eliminates having to worry about messing around with the Blue channel (for the most part), and the range window is fairly narrow.
Regards, Murray

Yeah, Mr Monday, could you explain it better? I tried to figure out the stuff, but couldn't. I used curves to perform the tanning in L*a*b but "ungotten" (allow me to invent a new verb ^^!) the feeling I wanted.

[mistermonday]

Sure, but I only have an iPhone with me so I will reply when I am back on my PC tonight NY Time. How familiar / comfortable are you with LAB?

[Quantum3]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

Sure, but I only have an iPhone with me so I will reply when I am back on my PC tonight NY Time. How familiar / comfortable are you with LAB?

Mmmhhh... Well... I write L*a*b* ^^

Let say, I know how the space works, the channels... in the end is the same than RGB but with different capabilities, such as the lightness channel, the A/B color channels, the super wide gamut of colors, how good is for correcting colors, for saturating, etc... I have read a couple of books about that space... I'm very concerned, but I don't use it, so I'm probably missing something.

Mart

[Mike Needham]

What is your level of experience Quantum3? It may help to advise you further. No point telling you stuff you know.

[mistermonday]

Hello Mart, yes technically you are correct L*a*b but I have been using the color space for several years but the color group I was part of used LAB for short.
It sounds like you understand the space pretty well. It has some danger zones but it does many things extremely well. Normal skin is always on the + side of both the A and B axes. A & B define the color independent of Lightness. The values of A relative to B determine to what extent the skin is pink versus yellow/brown. The magnitude of those values determine the Saturation. The Lightness value control how light or dark the color is.
BTW, this LAB color model is partly used in Camera RAW where the yellow-blue Temp slider emulates the B channel and the green-magenta slider emulates the A channel.
The numbers and the relationship between the A and B seem very intuitive to me. As A becomes > B the color shifts toward magenta. As B increases above A the color becomes more yellow. After you work with the numbers for a while you know pretty well what A,B values will produce which colors. As far as skin goes, you only need to concentrate on those two numbers to nail the color and saturation. Then you use the luminosity to adjust the brightness.
I have attached before and after samples. In the first before, at the sample point, the A and B levels are around 11 and 17. The lightness is up at 75 which is in the upper quarter tone (medium bright).
Suntanned skin has a very broad range but to me suntan means :
- B value which is 50-100% greater than A value
- B value somewhere in the 30-35 range for a medium tan (Saturation)
- L value needs to come down because tanned skin is darker.
Moving from RGB to LAB, an old fashion curve adj layer, and single point adjustment:
A goes from 11 to 18
B goes from 18 to 30
L goes from 75 down to 63
Mart, for you this may not be the ideal color of a tan. But you will find that slight adjustment of the values for A and B should get you what you like.
You may also find more accuracy by choosing a sample point which is in the upper quarter tone where a well exposed area of skin might be at a luminosity of 70-80.
Some people grew up with CMYK and they make all their skin color adjustment in that color space. That's too many variables to worry about for me. You also know that converting back & forth to LAB is non destructive unless you do it 10,000 times on an image.

The 2nd example I just pulled out of my Unretouched pile waiting to be started. Skin needs a fair amount of work, but just grabbing it as is, choose one upper quarter tone sample, isolate an area of skin, take it into LAB and just adust that one sample point to similar values to the previous image and voila, you are right in the "tan zone". This took about two minutes.
I am not sure if this is the type of thing you are looking for or perhaps I have misunderstood you original question.

Regards, Murray

[LaurenW]

i did it here, and all i did was copy the skin to a new layer, set it to multiply, and lower the opacity until it looked natural

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/20...e845f6413c.jpg

[Quantum3]

Originally Posted by LaurenW

i did it here, and all i did was copy the skin to a new layer, set it to multiply, and lower the opacity until it looked natural

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/20...e845f6413c.jpg

Thanks for the quick fix Lauren. Will check it too