Skin Tone Help

[siiLent]

Hi everyone,

Long time reader, looking for a little help.
I'm trying to replicate the following skin tones of this image.

http://sabrinacichy.deviantart.com/a...%20light&qo=84

I can't seem to figure out how this tone is achieved. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

[Mike Needham]

What's your starting point/image?

[kav]

I don't see anything special here. Assuming you match lighting + falloff when it comes to skin, zoom in to a patch. Compare to the reference there. Only look at the skin. Frame in on that. Make some curve adjustments to match the colors on the highlights. Find a shadow area of skin. Adjust the shadow balance in a similar way. Zoom back out. Now adjust eyes, lips, clothing, hair, background, etc. around the skin you just adjusted. You can use the skin to set the overall, then make further adjustments wherever the rest isn't working.

Looking at the reference here, that was the likely method. Your eyes see the other things too. This causes the overall image to lie to you. Make sure you dont' turn it into a major S-curve, or you'll have problems. Oh and you can adjust two color channels such as R+B independently in these curve functions. It doesn't have to be just the overall. It's a good way to tune shadow and highlight color casts.