Skin tone correcting in LR

lilmomma

Are there any techniques/advice for skin color correcting in lightroom? I see tutorials ALL the time for photoshop, but never for LR. well I only use lightroom and i always just eyeball it, but I would really like to start doing it right.

Thanks in advance!

BinaryFx

LR is pretty much designed to be a visual application.

There are two main camps/viewpoints on editing skintone:

i) Only eyeball the image, nothing else is needed when using hardware calibration, a good monitor and the right ICC profiles etc.

ii) Use any/all of the above, but also use info readings to see what the pixel values in the file are indicating too.

The second option is probably where most of the Photoshop tutorials are coming from, they often use say SWOP CMYK values - because originally drum scanners did not provide a colour monitor display and the operators had to rely on known ratios of inks. These old ratio formulas were only for well lit skin, not in shadow or strange lighting conditions or areas where there may be cosmetics applied etc. It will depend on the race, age and other subject variables. It is more of an art than a science.

Whether one uses CMYK, RGB or Lab mode info readings, one can still have a second opinion if one understands the relationship between the various values reported by the info reading for the pixel area under the mouse. Usually this is averaged and not reported on a single pixel.

When it comes to LR, there are no CMYK/Lab readings if I remember correctly...just RGB. So it will be about finding a pleasing ratio of red compared to green compared to blue.


Regards,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/