Photoshop Gurus Forum
Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
help with skin tones
- Thread starter petesoul
- Start date
Tom Mann
Guru
- Messages
- 7,222
- Likes
- 4,343
The best way to demonstrate the various techniques that can be used would be if you could post one of your own images that is giving you problems.
In the interim, be aware that a good place to start with skin tones is the rule of thumb for CMYK values for the brighter areas for someone with Caucasian skin: The yellow should be 5%-10% higher than the magenta value, and cyan should be around one half of the average of m&y. Black should show in shadow areas only.
Shadow areas pick up casts from other light sources in the scene (eg, the blue sky, ambient tungsten lighting, etc.), so the above rule has to be taken with a grain of salt in these areas.
The middle of her forehead is CMYK = 7, 19, 30, 0, so she's a bit more yellow than "the rule". However, one must always consider other areas of the image. For example, the skin color in the image you posted goes well with the weakly saturated sky.
Post one of your own images and we'll see what we can do to help.
Tom M
In the interim, be aware that a good place to start with skin tones is the rule of thumb for CMYK values for the brighter areas for someone with Caucasian skin: The yellow should be 5%-10% higher than the magenta value, and cyan should be around one half of the average of m&y. Black should show in shadow areas only.
Shadow areas pick up casts from other light sources in the scene (eg, the blue sky, ambient tungsten lighting, etc.), so the above rule has to be taken with a grain of salt in these areas.
The middle of her forehead is CMYK = 7, 19, 30, 0, so she's a bit more yellow than "the rule". However, one must always consider other areas of the image. For example, the skin color in the image you posted goes well with the weakly saturated sky.
Post one of your own images and we'll see what we can do to help.
Tom M
Tom Mann
Guru
- Messages
- 7,222
- Likes
- 4,343
You're right -- lighting does play a huge part.
The first image you posted was taken in nearly direct sunlight (...possibly a very light scrim for a bit of softening... ), whereas in the second image you posted, the model was in shade, so the contrast on her skin was vastly less. It's no problem getting the CMYK values of the skin in one to be close to those values in the reference image. That only took a couple of applications of the selective color tool.
The main problem I had was boosting the contrast in your 2nd image up to the level of the 1st image in some sort of realistic way while retaining the cmyk values of the skin. As soon as I started to do this, noise in the skin areas became prominent, so I also had to do a bit of NR. I also had to cobble together some tweaks to deal with the big differences in the two sky areas.
The other major headache in trying to match these was the fact that the shadows in the reference image had M larger than Y, whereas in your 2nd image, because it was taken in soft light, the relation of M and Y stayed approximately constant as you go from the brightest to the darkest areas of the skin. To be honest, by this time, I was getting tired of working on the image, so I punted: I simply applied the NIK Color Efx pro "Sunlight" filter which yellows up the highlights (among other things).
Anyway, this is about the best I could do in 15 min of tweaking. It isn't perfect, but it's hopefully in the direction you want. If any parts of my process are of interest, let me know and I'll elaborate.
Cheers,
Tom M
The first image you posted was taken in nearly direct sunlight (...possibly a very light scrim for a bit of softening... ), whereas in the second image you posted, the model was in shade, so the contrast on her skin was vastly less. It's no problem getting the CMYK values of the skin in one to be close to those values in the reference image. That only took a couple of applications of the selective color tool.
The main problem I had was boosting the contrast in your 2nd image up to the level of the 1st image in some sort of realistic way while retaining the cmyk values of the skin. As soon as I started to do this, noise in the skin areas became prominent, so I also had to do a bit of NR. I also had to cobble together some tweaks to deal with the big differences in the two sky areas.
The other major headache in trying to match these was the fact that the shadows in the reference image had M larger than Y, whereas in your 2nd image, because it was taken in soft light, the relation of M and Y stayed approximately constant as you go from the brightest to the darkest areas of the skin. To be honest, by this time, I was getting tired of working on the image, so I punted: I simply applied the NIK Color Efx pro "Sunlight" filter which yellows up the highlights (among other things).
Anyway, this is about the best I could do in 15 min of tweaking. It isn't perfect, but it's hopefully in the direction you want. If any parts of my process are of interest, let me know and I'll elaborate.
Cheers,
Tom M
