Skin Tone Correction - Unclipping

[byRo]

An important, and often forgotten, first step to skin tone correction.
(in PS 7.0, but nothing limited) [details]

Couldn´t find a way to put the action in the tutorial, so here it is.

[Leah]

This is a really interesting technique. I can think of quite a few images where this would have been a useful first step.

[venivedi]

Thanks byRo for sharing the technique.

[Flora]

Hi Roland,

I didn't have the time to try your Tutorial before today ....
I tried it on different pictures and just wanted to tell you that it is excellent!
Thank you so much for sharing part of your great knowledge with us!!!!

By reading it and the others you wrote, I realized that what I achieve with Photoshop is only due to luck, instinct, eye, sheer stubborness and eagerness to learn and try new ways and 'experimenting' .... I have no clue about the 'mathematics' involved or why (beside what is basically obvious) the 'Tools' get me to the results I get ....

My mouth nearly fell to the floor while reading and following your steps in your Gaussian Blur and the High-Pass Filter - What gives? Tutorial ....
Well, Roland, if this is 'groundwork' (very clearly explained) .... I can't wait for the next row of instruction 'bricks'.

Thanks again!

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Flora

.... I realized that what I achieve with Photoshop is only due to luck, instinct, eye, sheer stubborness and eagerness to learn and try new ways and 'experimenting' ....

...and that is something that I admire sooo much.
Those who were not gifted with so much natural artistic talent as others , have to drudge through "the numbers" to get it right.

Rô

[Chip Hildreth]

Originally Posted by Flora

By reading it and the others you wrote, I realized that what I achieve with Photoshop is only due to luck, instinct, eye, sheer stubborness and eagerness to learn and try new ways and 'experimenting' .... I have no clue about the 'mathematics' involved or why (beside what is basically obvious) the 'Tools' get me to the results I get ....

Thanks again!

I couldn't pass this up!
Flora, if what you say there is true, you are by far the luckiest, most instinctive, stubbornest and eagerest retoucher on the planet... and you're fast too! Honestly, I'm always amazed at your intuition and depth of knowledge. You know the mathematics of imaging the way a concert musician knows the mathematics of sound.

Roland,
This is my kind of tutorial; one thing done well and usable almost every day. I'm going to hunt down the others you've done.
Thank you for a great solution to a common problem.

chip

[Flora]

Roland, Chip,

Wow...Thanks....

[byRo]

..replying to some questions from Ken:

Too much color:
Unfortunately when the "exaggerated saturation" layer is ON the color picker will pick up the "exaggerated" color, so you must turn it OFF when you are picking the color and then ON again to see better where you are painting.(*1)
Opacity:
The reason to use a lower number is because skin tones, and especially face tones, aren't flat. If you don't take care you can run over the cheek / nose or even lip redness without noticing - then the face ends up looking (too) artificially painted. So best to go light and slow.
Used only on portraits?:
No, as seen on some other threads, it comes in handy for un-blotching too.
Why not just use the healing tool?:
The Healing Patch tool is great for doing a whole bunch of things, but I stay away from it when dealing with luminosity / color corrections. The people at Adobe put together a real smart tool, but it thinks by itself and often it comes out with an unexpected answer. I do use it, but only for texture healing, after doing some heavy-handed stamping or for taking out small blemishes.

OK?
Rô
(*1) When there is a lot of un-clipping / un-blotching to do, I first make a small duplicate copy to serve as a color palette.

[Claudiobass]

Hello, This is my first intervention in the Forum and i found it very useful for me. I was folowing this tutorial to correct skin tone, i was trying with my photos, but when i finished my job i found a loss of contrast between the original layer and the skin tone corrected layer. Then I tryied to correct it increasing the contrast with a curves layer, but the correction disapeared, so i used the layer mask to preserv the skin correction. I was wondering if you have the same or I did something wrong.

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Claudiobass

...a loss of contrast between the original layer ..... I was wondering if you have the same or I did something wrong.

Nothing wrong.

Clipping occurs when some, or all, of the channels have maxed out. To be able to put some colour back in, it is necessary to arrange some elbow room. The way to do this is, exactly , by lowering the contrast.

After you have done the skin corrections you can put the missing contrast back in, although now it will most probably be less than in the original. Why? Because if your original was clipped, then the contrast had been pumped up too high.

Best way to get the limits right: Using Levels, RGB channel, hold down the <alt> key while adjusting the black and white points.
After getting the limits right you can do controlled contrast adjustments, see here.

Rô

[Claudiobass]

Thank you Ro I´ll try it

[Stroker]

I understand this technique. Took me a few minutes, but I got it.
My 'long' way of doing it is in this PSD: alcove_unclip.zip ~846k

If you think about it, you can boil this whole thing down to just one layer.

[cspringer]

That's interesting.

Usually, I make a Selective Color/white adjustment layer and correct...then, invert the mask and paint back the correction on the overblown areas. Sometimes (rarely) I might add a new layer and paint on top of it.

[naltysr]

Blown out highlights and shadows have always been a problem for me since i started retouching,Bingo Cliping rang a bell from my old drum scaning days and your ATN made sense to me. I stoped the ATN at some point and started playing around with a flatened image. Im going to try and upload ,orig & corrected images,again thanks for your help ,I owwe you one

[jjun0366]

How do you use the ATN?

[byRo]

Originally Posted by jjun0366

How do you use the ATN?

Follow the [details] link in the first post and you'll find a tutorial.

Rô

[realaqu]

Hi, Ro,

Thank you so much for the great method and it really works fantastic. I have a little question on your first stage, if I fill the top layer with 50% gray and set the blending mode to Luminosity, in that case I ll get the Hue and satruration information from the backgournd copy layer as well. after that I ll follow your other steps. is it the same as you taught me?


Realaqu

[byRo]

Originally Posted by realaqu

... if I fill the top layer with 50% gray and set the blending mode to Luminosity, in that case I ll get the Hue and saturation information from the background copy layer as well.

While this is perfectly true, I did things the other way round.

The high-pass layer serves as an almost grey layer on top of which the "background copy" os set to color - ends up the same way, we are only seeing the hue / saturation but with the benefit that we get some outlines to show us where we are.

Real glad that you're finding it useful.

Rô

[Paris]

Thanks Ro for a terrific color clipping correction method.

Do you apply your method to images before curves or levels adjustments or after doing the initial tonal adjustments? I have tried it both ways with different results and varying degrees of happiness with the outcome.

Paris

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Paris

Do you apply your method to images before curves or levels adjustments or after doing the initial tonal adjustments? I have tried it both ways with different results and varying degrees of happiness with the outcome.

I seem to change from time to time .
Nowadays, I will fix all luminosity stuff before worrying about the colours. So it goes something like this:

JPEG clean-up (if applicable);
Separate Luminosity;
Overall contrast adjustments (High radius sharpen / High-pass)
Put Lum in correct range for the skin (byRo B/C);
Rounding (Medium radius sharpening);
Edge / Texture Sharpening;
Mix in colours;
Colour Declipping (at last)

...after this, tone adjustments and touch-up work.

but maybe I'll change tomorrow.

Rô

[Jaime]

Thanks Ro for your wise color clipping correction method. Works very well.