Skin Tone Help

[MTVision]

I sometimes monitor CMYK values when adjusting skin tones (I did in this case), but I don't come anywhere near to following any formula. In this case the cyan value was 1%, which told me the reds were probably out of the ballpark, so I checked the red channel and found it was mostly clipped.

Chris Orwig has some pretty useful discussion of CMYK for skin tones, in section 3 at this link: Photoshop CS4 Tutorials | Portrait Retouching Essential Training

For me, monitoring CMYK values has been most useful as training in seeing skin tones in those terms. If the color is amiss, I can often just "see" that there's too much magenta or not enough yellow or whatever.

I really appreciate all the help! I've only had photoshop for about 2 months so I don't really know how to do a lot!

I did a black and white conversion like you suggested - doing it in layers (the face, the hood, etc). It came out really nice so thank you for that idea as well!!

 

[clanthar]

The red channel is very hot; most of the skin details are gone from that. So I first duplicated the background layer, copied the green channel and pasted that into the red channel, and changed blend mode of that layer to luminosity. That restores some detail to the skin.

After that, I selected just the face and used a curves adjustment layer to tweak that. Then selected the background and used a selective color adjustment layer to tone that way down. Finally, I used the shadows/highlights filter to brighten the face a little.

Thank you so much! I'll have to try that. I never knew you could copy one channel to the other. Do you or have you ever tried to get the skin tone right from the CMY values? I'm just curious because on other photos where the skin color looks right the. CMY values don't match the "formula" or even come close.

Megan,

That CMYK formula you've found is for use in a pre-press shop. I noted that Peano also responded and mentioned not paying too much attention to it.

By the way -- Peano -- nice job with the edit.

You can monitor CMYK values with Photoshop's Info window. Just wanted to note here that you should NEVER actually convert your photo to CMYK mode. Your photo is RGB and it's OK (mostly) to convert it to Lab mode and back, but never to CMYK.

That's a tough image; I've been sitting here poking at it a little and I'm prepared to admit defeat but I'll post what I got anyway. The central portion of his face that's in the sun is pretty clipped. I think given the RAW file it can be better processed. Here's what I got, I started by assuming his tee shirt was white.

If you'd like numbers to use for skin tone placement, pay attention to the Hue value. Average adult skin in an sRGB photo has a Hue value in the upper teens to mid twenties.

Joe

 

[KmH]

That's just over 12 hours of instruction - Photoshop CS4 Tutorials | Portrait Retouching Essential Training

 

[Assassin]

I watched a tutorial about skin tone by the numbers - how Cyan should be about 1/3 of Magenta and yellow should be slightly higher then magenta. Everytime I try following this the skin tone comes out looking wrong to me. My monitor isn't calibrated so maybe its just me but here is an example. The person in the photo is the one whose skin tone I have the hardest time with since he is a red head. His skin looks really orange red to me. How would I fix this? I tried curves and hue adjustment but I can't get it right. I'm also not that great in photoshop so any advice will be greatly appreciated!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68805931@N02/6283685659/

Does this photo look too sharp?

Applying skin tones to an uncalibrated monitor, well.... Calibration is THE most important step... Some great tips here as well...

 

[Peano]

That's just over 12 hours of instruction - Photoshop CS4 Tutorials | Portrait Retouching Essential Training

Yes, if you pay for it. The free part (section 3) that I recommended runs a little over half an hour.