Any ideas how to achieve these colours?

[SimonG]

How to achieve these perfect skin & clothes colours like here? any ideas?
mert & marcus calvin klein jeans
can't really get how they are adjusted.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-egz7VE9KAA...er_2012_04.jpg

[mshi]

I love their work too. They do their own retouching themselves!

[SimonG]

No idea how to get those colours... Tried something, but it's not that vibrant.

[mshi]

beauty disk and hard light in the first place. underexpose 1 to 2 stops perhaps in post. for the skin tone i would try gradient mapping.

[SimonG]

tried to underexpose...not, that's not it, curves got closer

[insmac]

If you dig through their photoshoots you'll notice a significant consistency in lighting and color. I bet CKJ is shot in broad daylight, harsh sunlight + bare reflector on flash head. If you're interested in backstage, there should be some footage avaliable either on CK website or on youtube.

Otherwise... OK, assume we have a pic shot in direct sunlight with its direction and position over the horizon similiar to these references. I'd duplicate the blue channel, paste it over, blend multiply, run shadow/highlights to bring back details, lower the opacity and tweak saturation and curves. That should take care of the skin.

Now, as for the tones, I'd adjust the curves in LAB to make the blues pop.

Keep in mind this is top notch retouching, done in some premier post house. Hence, all of the puzzles are adjusted separately, an overall tweaking is just a small part of the process.

[mshi]

insmac, you're the know-how tank. Thanks so much for your sage suggestions.

[insmac]

Well thats just guessing

Check out Steven Klein's CK underwear campaign. The tones are pretty similiar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWyWJkcR92s
As you can see there was a big fat ARRI 18kw HMI that came in handy when dealing with direct harsh tropic sunlight. Apart from that, the backstage footage has got the same color grading as the stills, it may be repetitious across different software.

[mshi]

Wow! that's a kickass fat light source.

[SimonG]

These guys are so freaking amazing.

[oneredpanther]

insmac didn't want to cite his sources, but sharing is caring :P

This is the thread you're looking for

[Mordack]

I'm not sure why but the image linked by the OP reminds me of a pic I took. It was taken in harsh sunlite. It's a low res Fb pic I know. Now, I am by no means a pro. I have a day job. ��
http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos...809_n.jpg?dl=1

[timschapker]

One quick way to even out skin tone and create a suntan look is to create a hue/saturation layer. Click the colorize box, then bring the saturation up to about 50. Adjust the hue and then lightness until you get the basic color you want. Back off the saturation until you get skin tones that look natural. Obviously, mask out the non-skin parts of the image.