Skin Tone OK?

Cason

Here is a photo of my daughter before her recital. What do you think of the skin tones after post? The shot was taken in the shade; therefore, there is a the blue cast that I want to get rid of.

How did I do? I know this picture can be worked better.

Before/After

jfriend

You can always check out Smugmug's skin tone tutorial for ideas on checking or adjusting skin tone. Your adjustment looks to me to still have a bit of a blue cast to it, but you should run it through the tutorial to see for yourself.

Cason

jfriend wrote:

You can always check out Smugmug's skin tone tutorial for ideas on checking or adjusting skin tone. Your adjustment looks to me to still have a bit of a blue cast to it, but you should run it through the tutorial to see for yourself.

Is it because yellow is lower than magenta?

jfriend

RTP wrote:

Is it because yellow is lower than magenta?

Yes. Yellow should always be at least as high as Magenta.

Since Yellow is the opposite of Blue, when Yellow is too low, it means Blue is too high (thus a blue color cast). The easiest way to raise the Yellow in RGB color mode is to lower the Blue. A simple curve or levels adjustment on the blue channel that lowers the Blue will get you a more balanced Yellow and Magenta.

I usually like Yellow to be a small bit larger than Magenta, but always at least equal to it. When measuring skin tones be careful to avoid areas of the skin that might not be representative of the real skin tone. In this case, her red-rosy cheeks look like she's either flush because of activity or temperature or she's got some makeup on, so I'd avoid measuring that area. The forehead, nose, chin and arm look like safe areas to measure.

Cason

jfriend, thank you for taking the time to explain.

How is this? I probably went overboard. This is comparing my original post process with the latest.

Before/After

jfriend

RTP wrote:

jfriend, thank you for taking the time to explain.

How is this? I probably went overboard. This is comparing my original post process with the latest.

The color looks a lot better to me (I don't think it's overboard) and the CMYK values all look to be in an expected range now. This looks good.

This has nothing to do with the color, but you might also try a highlight adjustment to tone down the brightness in the dress which tends to compete for the attention of your eyes and draw them away from her face. The whole image seems a little too bright to me also (particularly given that it's in the shade), so you might want to experiment with lower the brightness a tad.