coloring skin tones

[cducasse]

I know there is a lot of info out there, but i cannot figure out how to make any of it work. I am trying to color this image but can't figure out how to color the skin. I have searched for baby skin tones, looked at baby photos, and just can't figure it out. I've colored images before with skin tones, but i guess they had less detail to worry about. I have also tried several colors with just about every blend mode in Photoshop CS2.

Any help at all would be great, if you can figure it out, please post the color info as well as any other steps you took.

Thank You in advance for any assistance.

Chris

http://web.mac.com/chris.ducasse/iWeb/Site/Blank.html

[ashkumar]

Re: coloring skin tones

(1) make a level adjustment layer and with auto setting.
(2) make channer mixer layer with monochrome selected
(3) make a soil color layer adjustment layer (take blending mode "Color") with Color # DFB997.

It's a perfect skin tone.

Ashkumar

[philbach]

Re: coloring skin tones

Well I think that skin tones are hard. And the colors vary across the face. A while back I made some gradients mapping various colors to various amounts of luminosity. I used faces and what not for the source. Then to the black and white I applied a gradient mask which applies these various colors.

[CJ Swartz]

Re: coloring skin tones

The image has color in it that can be brought out and adjusted with Curves/Levels and Selective Color. There are a lot of artifacts in the image that distort the color, and I smoothed them out a bit with Noiseware before I worked on the color. Colorizing is not easy for most of us (Vikki has it down pat, but most of the rest of us struggle with it), and I try to find the color in the image if I can because I can't paint worth a darn!

According to Dan Margulis, (author of numerous digital color management articles and books), the skin tones for a fair haired Caucasian would be low cyan, about 4-6% more yellow than magenta, and little or no black (this is what I remember -- it could be off a bit), and I think he said that babies would show more yellow. [DrSeuss's example looks about right]. As philbach explained, skin isn't one color over all the face, and people who colorize often add some reds to nose tips, ear tips, cheeks, chins, and do other things to make the skin look more realistic. As you stated, there's lots of info out there about colorizing skin, and it takes practice along with the studying to get better at it. Look at Vikki's work here and on her websites, as well as others who do it professionally, and practice.

[chillin]

Re: coloring skin tones

Using iCorrect, Neat Image, selective rendering & plenty of layers for blending

[Littlecoo]

Re: coloring skin tones

nice work Chillin
Chris, Here are links to a couple of tutorials on Worth1000 (if you haven't checked them out already) Basic colourize with curves and here is some more

[Craig Walters]

Re: coloring skin tones

chillin,

nice.

what is iCorrect and do you have a link?

[chillin]

Re: coloring skin tones

thanks
It's a Photoshop plugin & here more info

[Craig Walters]

Re: coloring skin tones

chillin,

thank you

[cducasse]

Re: coloring skin tones

I have made some more attempts at this, I'm still not happy with the way the hairline merges with the facial skin tone. I think I finally got the skin tone...I'm happy with it at least.

Any ideas?

http://web.mac.com/chris.ducasse/iWeb/Site/babies.html

[Smokie]

Re: coloring skin tones

this has been some useful reading about skin tones.

thank you all.