Need help with skin tones.

urbanaries

My first client with non-caucasian skin. She has very dark olive/light african-american skin. (Gorgeous little girl as I'm sure you'll agree).

This image is a good example of where I'm having trouble. When composing through the lens, the orange wall eally complimented her skin tone. But now when I attempt color correction in Lightroom (1.0), I just don't seem to be getting it right. I bumped up the exposure and brightness, but then that made her skin a deeper orange, so I tried to tone that down, but it's not right. Thoughts?

Original out of camera:


my latest attempt:

Andy

Your values are certainly within range. Watch the exposure at shoot, the orig is about 3/4s stop underexposed. Proper exposure will always be best, allowing more leeway in post.

I got nearly the same result processing your orig in Photoshop, raising the exposure and fill light in ACR, then with a quick curves adjustment in CS3.

Using i2e, I also got an excellent result, not far off from your edit.

Good job.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone
http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2007/02/18/one-third-of-the-job/

urbanaries

Andy wrote:

Your values are certainly within range. Watch the exposure at shoot, the orig is about 3/4s stop underexposed. Proper exposure will always be best, allowing more leeway in post.

I got nearly the same result processing your orig in Photoshop, raising the exposure and fill light in ACR, then with a quick curves adjustment in CS3.

Using i2e, I also got an excellent result, not far off from your edit.

Good job.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone
http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2007/02/18/one-third-of-the-job/

Ok, Andy that makes me feel better, but it does look a bit warm to me? Maybe its my uncalibrated laptop, but I trust your judgment and will shoot for the same values in other edits for her skin.

This may sound completely dumb, but I can't figure out how to utilize i2e in PS2; I have downloaded and installed it but can't seem to run/find it. In the meantimeI rely on smugmug "auto"

lynne

urbanaries

Andy wrote:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone

FYI, an addendum on african/american skin values would be quite helpful in this skintone info.

Andy

urbanaries wrote:

FYI, an addendum on african/american skin values would be quite helpful in this skintone info.

Did you look at my blog post I linked above?

Rhuarc

I just read the blog post Andy, and I guess my question is where does i2e come into the mix? I mean at what point do you stop using photoshop (or RAW) to make your color corrections, and start using i2e?

Also, do you use the i2e photoshop plugin, or one of the programs? Which would you reccomend getting?

urbanaries

Andy wrote:

Did you look at my blog post I linked above?

reading it now, sorry, yes that helps in a general sense. But you provided three value sets of caucasian skin, rough adjustments for asian and hispanic skin, and no values for the very wide range of black skin. So I think the tute could be more complete.

That said your guys' color mangement content is very useful, and I wouldn't have gotten such a close first edit without it.

gmonkeh

Color correction is where I'm the weakest with PS. There's a great plugin for Photoshop called Color Mechanic Pro that you might want to check out too.

Andy

urbanaries wrote:

reading it now, sorry, yes that helps in a general sense. But you provided three value sets of caucasian skin, rough adjustments for asian and hispanic skin, and no values for the very wide range of black skin. So I think the tute could be more complete.

That said your guys' color mangement content is very useful, and I wouldn't have gotten such a close first edit without it.

Hey, we teach you to fish. In my blog entry, I say "watch out for oversaturation" and "too-yellow" and "too-green." Bring on some more tough examples, and we'll help