Hi! I'm editing two images & I have no confidence in my skin tones - my monitor hasn't been calibrated, and I don't think I'm a very good judge of what's best. Would you mind taking a look & letting me know how you think these look?
Too red? Too yellow? Too green?
p.s. ignore the boring pose - I know it's dull, but I need it for a specific reason ...
Thanks Jaime! Your suggestion was great; I'm not sure I've used selective color before, so it was also a great tip. (Channel mixer used to be my favorite, but it's so heavy handed compared to selective color.) What do you think now?
better but still a little too reddish and also too much magenta for my taste.
try to do a slight color balance with the green slider to +5 and also try playing around with a black&white adjustment layer (providing you have that option, it's only available in cs3 upwards) with a red filter and then reduce the opactiy of that layer until it matches a nice skin tone. you can do the same with a channel mixer layer in red filter "mode".
better but still a little too reddish and also too much magenta for my taste.
try to do a slight color balance with the green slider to +5 and also try playing around with a black&white adjustment layer (providing you have that option, it's only available in cs3 upwards) with a red filter and then reduce the opactiy of that layer until it matches a nice skin tone. you can do the same with a channel mixer layer in red filter "mode".
still a bit too much magenta. Another thing you can try select the are where the magenta is noticeable and do a level layer and slide the gray to the righ or left to see if it changes it a bit.
Oh boy - you guys are being really patient! Jaime - the levels didn't really seem to help, so I went back & increased both my adjustments - selective color & color balance. It feels like I might have gone too far this time (the girl looks a little green to me), but perhaps thats just me. Or have I still not gone far enough?
BTW, I just looked at this edit & the first one I posted, and you're both completely right - the first was laughably red & magenta. I can see it now that it's changed, but it worries me that I can't see it when I first do it.
Bebe, have you ever tried portrait professional? It's great for fixing this type of stuff...
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No, I haven't tried it. I'll give it a look. At any rate, your example of how it should look was really helpful! I'm going to try to imitate it in CS2.
hey bebe why don't you shoot me the original, i'll give it a try on the editing and send you the psd file afterwards including all layers so you can reproduce all the steps on your own...
Another way to do this (there are many) is to use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Choose Reds in the dropdown, then click on the reddest part of the face. Then decrease the saturation to taste.
Another way to adjust the colors if you don't have a RAW file is using levels. Select levels, click on the grey (mid point) eyedropper and find a spot in the whites of the eye that appear grey. Click on that spot with the eyedropper. You can click around that spot as well until you get the overall color adjustment you want.
Here is my effort using that technique for one of the two shots you posted.
Prof_Fate - what a simple & elegant way to get the right skin tones. I never knew that would work. Kelli - I went ahead & bought Portrait Professional in a panic about my inability to see the skin tones well, and it's going to be really useful. What a fun program! I'll just have to put off upgrading my CS2 till next year!
Mephisto, how could I resist an offer like that? I shot off the girl's raw file to you; I'd love to see what you come up with. Danke schoen!
Ann & Jaime - many thanks for your suggestions & input. I've learned more in a couple of hours than I did all year!
Kelli & bassbone - it's really helpful to see what others would do. Many huge thanks!
You can also use curves to adjust skintone. Go to each colour and pull the middle of the line up to add and down to subtract. It always works better if you add ;) Then, you can go back to the RGB and pull the bottom left of the line to the right a hair to get your contrast back. Just another option :)
ETA: Like this:
Grab the line in the middle then type in these numbers:
i'll send you the altered raw file (some tweaks in camera raw can change a whole lot already) as well as the psd file later.
here are the steps (i hope i didn't take it too far):
1)create background copy (always doing this, to avoid altering the original background layer)
2)create channel mixer layer, preset blue filter (turns your pic b&w)
3)curves for some contrast
4)reduce opacity of the channel mixer layer down to 50%
5)another channel mixer layer to bump up the colors (red and blue channels)
6)another curves layer with a vignette mask.
7)slight shadows/highlights on background copy
8)selective color layer to bump up and tweak the colors a little more
9)yet another curves layer with a stronger vignette, reduce opacity to 60%
10)smart sharpen on another background copy at radius 1.4/treshold 70 and another at 0.6/50 to selectivly sharpen around the eyes and inner face, because it seems backfocused meaning you focused on her shirt rather than her eyes
hope it helps a bit, if you have any further questions let me know.
and like i said, you don't have to take it that far, a few basic tweaks in camera raw can really do most of the job and you could have probably done most of my above steps wit that (exept for the masking and the trick with the reduced b&w layer), but i'm just not really used to this tool, and i probably have a layers fetish or sumpn...lol
i'll send you the altered raw file (some tweaks in camera raw can change a whole lot already) as well as the psd file later.
here are the steps (i hope i didn't take it too far):
1)create background copy (always doing this, to avoid altering the original background layer)
2)create channel mixer layer, preset blue filter (turns your pic b&w)
3)curves for some contrast
4)reduce opacity of the channel mixer layer down to 50%
5)another channel mixer layer to bump up the colors (red and blue channels)
6)another curves layer with a vignette mask.
7)slight shadows/highlights on background copy
8)selective color layer to bump up and tweak the colors a little more
9)yet another curves layer with a stronger vignette, reduce opacity to 60%
10)smart sharpen on another background copy at radius 1.4/treshold 70 and another at 0.6/50 to selectivly sharpen around the eyes and inner face, because it seems backfocused meaning you focused on her shirt rather than her eyes
hope it helps a bit, if you have any further questions let me know.
and like i said, you don't have to take it that far, a few basic tweaks in camera raw can really do most of the job and you could have probably done most of my above steps wit that (exept for the masking and the trick with the reduced b&w layer), but i'm just not really used to this tool, and i probably have a layers fetish or sumpn...lol
Fantastic Mephisto! You went above & beyond, and helped me tremendously.
You can also use curves to adjust skintone. Go to each colour and pull the middle of the line up to add and down to subtract. It always works better if you add ;) Then, you can go back to the RGB and pull the bottom left of the line to the right a hair to get your contrast back. Just another option :)
ETA: Like this:
Grab the line in the middle then type in these numbers:
