Skin tones

[macdonj1]

I can't seem to get skin tones right in this picture. Is it the bright colors in the sweaters that is throwing it off? I used a fill flash and auto wb. The young boy in the blue shirt is very pale, naturally.
Thoughts? Opinions?

 

[Braineack]

it appears it was too much flash and washed out their features...dad, being furthest away, still looks pretty spot on.

 

[KmH]

It would be a tough edit.

First, I would have gotten closer to the family, either physically or by lens zoom.

From the pin light in the middle of their eyes it looks like you used a hot shoe mounted flash unit with no diffuser?
Light that is on the lens axis prevents facial shadows. Facial shadows give a subjects face depth and character.
Many hot shoe flash units have a flash head that can be adjusted to match the light beam shape to the focal length of the lens and/or the subject distance from the camera.
At short focal length the beam of light is wide and subjects can't be to far from the camera.
At longer focal lengths the beam of light is made narrower as focal length increases and subjects can be further from the camera because the light is concentrated by narrowing the beam of light.

Part of the flash issue is light fall off.
Dad is furthest from the flash unit so less light got to Dad.. Inverse-square law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Small light sources deliver harsh light. Portrait photographers generally use flash that is off the camera, and that is made apparently larger by using a variety of light modifiers like umbrellas, brollys, and softboxes.

 

[Ysarex]

Keith is right, the on-camera flash is not your friend. Auto white balance is also not your friend. Your photo is very blue due to the auto white balance and Keith explained the flash problem well. Get the flash off the camera and set a custom white balance.

Joe

 

[macdonj1]

Thank you for the advice. Ysarex did you add a filter to that image?

 

[Ysarex]

Thank you for the advice. Ysarex did you add a filter to that image?

No filter. I opened it in Photoshop and corrected the white balance. Then I darkened the faces and hands of the boys and Mom a little. Made some contrast tweaks and couldn't resist dropping a little blue in the sky to finish it.

Joe

 

[KmH]

Thank you for the advice. Ysarex did you add a filter to that image?

What image editing software did you use when you were trying to adjust the skin tones?

 

[macdonj1]

Photoshop is what I'm using. I shoot in RAW so I tried to do some fixes there. I changed the white balance to daylight, and also tried to warm it up some. I have a few versions saved but didn't like any of them. The blue sky is what confused me on the edit. lol Nice touch.