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Red skin tones?
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Oct 19, 2014 06:35:29   #
Tim Stapp Loc: Mid Mitten
 
Recent submission for a class project. Instructor commented on skin tone being too red. I'm nearly completely color blind. Comments/suggestions on this are welcome. How to avoid in the future?

Wendy
Wendy...
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Oct 19, 2014 12:36:07   #
jonsommer Loc: Usually, somewhere on the U.S. west coast.
 
Tim, getting pleasing skin tones is one of the greatest challenges in portrait photography, along with composition, expression and lighting. But there is no simple one-step solution. I would suggest, as a place to start, looking at the many photoshop tutorials on skin tone on YouTube, there are also several fairly good books on skin tone available from Amazon, I think that even Adobe has some Photoshop tutorials on skin tone posted on the Photoshop URL. So you have lots of resources and lots of ways to approach the problem, and ways to solve it. There are even dedicated portrait software programs that have skin tone 'sliders' you can use to get a pleasing skin tone.

You didn't mention what post processing software you use, if any, or what camera, lens and settings you used - so I'm just assuming that you are willing to post process your images to make them the best they can be.

In addition to finding multiple ways to modify skin tones in the software I use, I have come to the realization that what I am really trying to do is produce a skin tone that satisfies me AND pleases my subject, accuracy, or a 'correct' and exact reproduction of the subjects skin tone is not important to me..

Our own Bobby Deal is working on a set of tutorials that will teach his workflow, and I'd be very surprised if achieving pleasing skin tones wasn't fairly high on his agenda. Knowing Bobby, I expect his tutorials to be top notch.

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Oct 19, 2014 17:35:16   #
Bobby Deal Loc: Loveland Colorado
 
Thanks Jon I actually kind of stalled on the tutorials but will be getting back to that project soon as the fall portrait rush starts to slow down.

Tim, your instructor is correct the skin tone is very odd in this image and the problems are multiple, while her jest and forehead are heavy on the magenta the cheeks and mask of the face actually show a bias to the yellow. My guess for what happened here is that the light sources were mixed in that the mixed color bias suggests that this was captured in ambient light with a small gold reflector used as fill on the face and the white balance setting was likely set to auto and it simply was unable to balance the two colors of light

To correct in post would require a couple of steps beginning with a selective color adjustment in the Red and Magenta channels to try and find a balance in the color that would be consistent across all the skin areas.

Once that is accomplished then dialing in the proper skin tones on a new layer via selective color and hue / saturation adjustments in the individual color channels would slowly get You to a pleasing warm tone where the Reds read about 232-240

Then from there standard retouching to whiten the teeth, soften some wrinkles and an overall light skin smoothing would help to pull everything to get her smoothly.

Color management and skin processing is a workflow unto its self and can take a lot of practice to develop a system of working with it to settle on an effective workflow that works for you.

The first step though is to always try and have as accurate of white balance as possible at the time of capture. I know a lot of guys who shoot Raw feel they can just set the camera to auto white balance and fix it in post. For me this is a half measure and often requires significant adjustments that have negative impact on pixel quality and integrity to achieve a proper balance.

The thing for me is that if you are adding any supplemental light from strobes or reflectors that are not present at the time the camera meters the scene and sets the white balance marker in the image side car file it is often setting the white balance for a completely different light.

For those that say white balance adjustment do not apeffect pixel quality all I can say is watch your histogrAm as you adjust Johore balance. All those changes y see in the histogram are changes to the pixels as recodprded by the camera at the point of capture. Pixel degradation happens anytime we alter a pixel, while the negative effects are not always instantly visible to the naked eye, it is a cumulative process where every adjustment we make in the workflow adds to the changes. Minimizing pixel modification in the retouching workflow minimizes issues like color and tonality issues, noise, chromatic edge aberrations and halos etc.

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Oct 19, 2014 22:18:11   #
CajonPhotog Loc: Shreveport, LA
 
Here is a quick way to get your WB corrected, and you are still able to adjust it back using a slider: IN PS CC 2014
1. Image > Duplicate > OK
2. On the duplicate: Filter > Blur > Average
3. Select original photo, then: Window > Arrange > Tile all Vertically
4. Bring up a levels (or curves) adjustment layer > select middle eyedropper click anywhere in the Duplicate, Blur average, photo.
***Your puicture should now be adjusted to a zero WB.****
If you feel it has gone too far you can adjust the opacity of that adjustment layer.
5. Delete Duplicate image (don't save changes).
You have completed the adjustment of the WB, and may come back to that Levels or curves layer and readjust the opacity at any time till you merge it in with the other layers.
Hope it works for you.

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Oct 19, 2014 22:23:53   #
Bobby Deal Loc: Loveland Colorado
 
CajonPhotog wrote:
Here is a quick way to get your WB corrected, and you are still able to adjust it back using a slider: IN PS CC 2014
1. Image > Duplicate > OK
2. On the duplicate: Filter > Blur > Average
3. Select original photo, then: Window > Arrange > Tile all Vertically
4. Bring up a levels (or curves) adjustment layer > select middle eyedropper click anywhere in the Duplicate, Blur average, photo.
***Your puicture should now be adjusted to a zero WB.****
If you feel it has gone too far you can adjust the opacity of that adjustment layer.
5. Delete Duplicate image (don't save changes).
You have completed the adjustment of the WB, and may come back to that Levels or curves layer and readjust the opacity at any time till you merge it in with the other layers.
Hope it works for you.
Here is a quick way to get your WB corrected, and ... (show quote)

May I ask what exactly is a Zero White Balance?
White balance is based on the kelvin temperature of the light source and I have never encountered a light source with a kelvin temp of Zero?

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Oct 19, 2014 23:44:54   #
CajonPhotog Loc: Shreveport, LA
 
Bobby Deal wrote:
May I ask what exactly is a Zero White Balance?
White balance is based on the kelvin temperature of the light source and I have never encountered a light source with a kelvin temp of Zero?


As I did not have a name for it, I just picked zero balance at random. It is more of a neutral balance of all the colors combined. If the "average blur" would have come up 50% gray, then there would be NO color cast at all. When you click on the blurred layer with the middle eyedropper, PS tries to adjust that color to 50% gray. Does it work every time, nope, not for me, but when it does work it saves me a lot of time with editing.

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Oct 20, 2014 05:09:11   #
Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska
 
Tim Stapp wrote:
Recent submission for a class project. Instructor commented on skin tone being too red. I'm nearly completely color blind. Comments/suggestions on this are welcome. How to avoid in the future?

First reduce saturation. That corrects about 75% of whats wrong.

There is no "correct" white balance, but less red (more cyan) and less yellow (more blue) looks nicer to me.

Masking off the background and then shifting its color to green and perhaps desaturating it even more looks nice too.

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Oct 20, 2014 08:28:33   #
Bobbee
 
Colored Blind, hummm. So as you are looking at the screen making all the suggested adjustment you cannot see the color. That might still be a problem. I am wondering, as long as this it portrait work, next time get a grey card in there. Might help you with 'your' issue.

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Oct 20, 2014 11:30:52   #
magnetoman Loc: Purbeck, Dorset, UK
 
I was talking to a colour blind photographer at the weekend - he told me he simply doesn't mess with the colour in pp and accepts whatever the camera has provided - very restricting! I think I would be doing even more b&w than I do now if it were my problem - I just don't see how you can overcome colour blindness??

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Oct 20, 2014 11:33:59   #
Bobby Deal Loc: Loveland Colorado
 
magnetoman wrote:
I was talking to a colour blind photographer at the weekend - he told me he simply doesn't mess with the colour in pp and accepts whatever the camera has provided - very restricting! I think I would be doing even more b&w than I do now if it were my problem - I just don't see how you can overcome colour blindness??


I think like anything else people adapt and overcome. If it were an issue for me I would spend time studying images that are known to have correct color balances until I was confident in my ability to recognize a correct look in images as I saw them.

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Oct 20, 2014 12:24:35   #
magnetoman Loc: Purbeck, Dorset, UK
 
yes, that may well help, although the guy I spoke with gave me the example that if he was asked to colour-match the grass, he would choose a shade of orange!
Bobby Deal wrote:
I think like anything else people adapt and overcome. If it were an issue for me I would spend time studying images that are known to have correct color balances until I was confident in my ability to recognize a correct look in images as I saw them.

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Oct 20, 2014 13:01:31   #
Bobbee
 
Bobby Deal wrote:
I think like anything else people adapt and overcome. If it were an issue for me I would spend time studying images that are known to have correct color balances until I was confident in my ability to recognize a correct look in images as I saw them.


So I noticed about 2-3 months ago when I was going to shoot a wedding my head felt off-balanced. I did the hand over eye while driving and said 'Crap my contact fell out' My assistant looked and said it was not in my right eye. Got home that night, left came out, dug for the right....and it came out. Said 'DAMN, I have a problem'' Went for new contacts. Guy said I have a floater. Went to EYE Dr. after many tests she said I had a cataract. Surgery soon. But I asked how could the guy give me contacts with my eye like that. She said interesting question.

The reason for this SHORT story. That is how I think a Color Blind person would approach colored picture. What was that line from the Moody Blues.

"Yellows Grey, Reds are white. But we decide which is right. Which is an illusion."

The problem is the Moody Blues were always stoned on Acid and had their own color spectrum.

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Oct 20, 2014 16:43:04   #
Tim Stapp Loc: Mid Mitten
 
Yes, Indeed! I have begun this since this photo. We shall see. I have just been letting Lightroom do it's thing.

The thing is, the subject in the photo is my wife. The red splotchiness on her chest and upper neck is her reaction to sun. I just assumed (yes, I know what that means).

Bobbee wrote:
Colored Blind, hummm. So as you are looking at the screen making all the suggested adjustment you cannot see the color. That might still be a problem. I am wondering, as long as this it portrait work, next time get a grey card in there. Might help you with 'your' issue.

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Oct 20, 2014 16:47:44   #
Tim Stapp Loc: Mid Mitten
 
Great suggestion. Indeed, I have learned to adapt and overcome. Green traffic lights (lowest light on the tree) look the same as street lights. I have learned to judge where a traffic light should be and watch other traffic and look for and watch crossing signs. Generally, there are 12-15 flashes on the crossing lights before the light turns red. Horizontal traffic lights still give me fits. Old town San Diego is the opposite of Hialeah, Fla.

Bobby Deal wrote:
I think like anything else people adapt and overcome. If it were an issue for me I would spend time studying images that are known to have correct color balances until I was confident in my ability to recognize a correct look in images as I saw them.

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Oct 20, 2014 20:06:34   #
Bobby Deal Loc: Loveland Colorado
 
magnetoman wrote:
yes, that may well help, although the guy I spoke with gave me the example that if he was asked to colour-match the grass, he would choose a shade of orange!


And as he is aware of that when he actually color adjusted a photo he would select what appeared to him as a shade of orange but would actually be green and his adjustments would be correct

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