Editing Black People Skin

[LTP]

I am just not getting this right. This wasn't paid or anything. I just wanted to learn how to edit darker skinned people. I grew up in a place where there were 3, maybe 4, black families so moving to this new place requires me to learn this if I ever want to start photographing here.

I understand the white balance is off. But is there any way to save this photo? Will someone try editing this photo and teaching me what they did? To me, they look pretty orange, and I don't think that's what it's supposed to be. When I fix the white balance, they turn orange. When I lower saturation in reds, they look dull.. I have absolutely no experience with this skin type!

Thank you in advance!

Edit: The woman also has terrible bags under her eyes. I am not sure if I should edit them out (don't want to be rude) or leave them (where it looks bad). When I do edit them, it doesn't look anything like her..

 

[MTVision]

I can't really help you on the skin tone but I would at least lighten the dark circles under the women's eyes, quite a bit. It's not rude - people want to look their best in photos. Also, the shadowing on the little girls face (from the mom) and on the dads Face (from the girls) is pretty bad. Do you have any other shots like this where the shadows aren't that bad?

 

[oldmacman]

Ok, here's a pretty quick edit. Not knowing their true skin tones makes what I did a bit of guess work.

- the biggest issue was the WB and exposure. Corrected for fluorescent lighting and increased the exposure by almost 3/4 of a stop.
- adjust the levels to bring the girl's dresses to read as white rather than grey. Just eyeballing here.
- the WB, exposure and level adjustment introduced noise and revealed over-saturation.
- saturation on the red and orange channels was reduced and NR was applied
- you may want to sharpen your original file as it now looks a tad soft with all the processing.

 

[cgipson1]

main problem is underexposure, softness, and too much yellow/green

your lighting and posing needs work.... the girl on the right is throwing a bad shadow on dad.. and mom is throwing a shadow on the little girl she is holding.

 

[cgipson1]

Ok, here's a pretty quick edit. Not knowing their true skin tones makes what I did a bit of guess work.



- the biggest issue was the WB and exposure. Corrected for fluorescent lighting and increased the exposure by almost 3/4 of a stop.
- adjust the levels to bring the girl's dresses to read as white rather than grey. Just eyeballing here.
- the WB, exposure and level adjustment introduced noise and revealed over-saturation.
- saturation on the red and orange channels was reduced and NR was applied
- you may want to sharpen your original file as it now looks a tad soft with all the processing.

Nice edit.. far better than what I could come up with!

 

[marmots]

here's what i could do

though it looks more yellow, and green upon upload

 

[LTP]

I understand that it's a pretty bad photo. I took these about 4 weeks ago and I've improved since then with composition and lighting. But back then I just asked if I could practice on them.
Is my edit too unsaturated? I was trying to get the red/orange look out. But maybe it's supposed to be there since I'm used to editing white skin tones?

That's the closest I could get it to their skin tones but I feel like it may be too dull?

 

[oldmacman]

I understand that it's a pretty bad photo. I took these about 4 weeks ago and I've improved since then with composition and lighting. But back then I just asked if I could practice on them.
Is my edit too unsaturated? I was trying to get the red/orange look out. But maybe it's supposed to be there since I'm used to editing white skin tones?

That's the closest I could get it to their skin tones but I feel like it may be too dull?

Huge improvement over the original. Just make a level adjustment to bring in some highlights. It does look a little flat, but the skin tones are very pleasing. Looking at this, I can see that I left my edit too red. Nice work.

 

[KreGg]

My edit:

 

[ConradM]

I'd be careful with the moms eyes... they probably just look like that.

 

[Tiberius47]

Here's my go.

I used levels to get the eyedroppers to correct white balance, mid tone contrast and the highlights and shadows. Then I used Shadows/highlights to bring back detail in the highlights.

 

[Dominantly]

Interesting renditions.

OP- Your lighting needs serious cash/work.

 

[Destin]

This thread is a PERFECT example of why it's so important to get your lighting and exposure right in camera. You can't make a bad photo good in photoshop. You can make it slightly better, but a bad photo is a bad photo.


If you'd gotten lighting and exposure correct in camera, the skin tones wouldn't be a problem. They might have needed a slight white balance adjustment in post (ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS SHOOT RAW) and maybe a slight adjustment in tint. Underexposing photos leads to massive skin tone issues that are often uncorrectable.

 

[LTP]

This thread is a PERFECT example of why it's so important to get your lighting and exposure right in camera. You can't make a bad photo good in photoshop. You can make it slightly better, but a bad photo is a bad photo.


If you'd gotten lighting and exposure correct in camera, the skin tones wouldn't be a problem. They might have needed a slight white balance adjustment in post (ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS SHOOT RAW) and maybe a slight adjustment in tint. Underexposing photos leads to massive skin tone issues that are often uncorrectable.

Very true. I learned my lesson. I've been shooting in raw since and I think my photos have gotten better. These are some I took today: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...um-photo-gallery/266370-first-newborn-cc.html
Any opinions on those?

 

[naptime]

mom appears to be indian, and thats the way her eyes are. they aren't "bags'

if that were my family, and someone provided photos back to us, with her eyes changed, i would be highly offended and far from happy.