Skin Tones (Redux)

[Doublehelix]

I saw the other thread ("Struggling with Skin Tones" http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=40772034 ), and thought I would post my own problem so as not to dilute that other thread.

I have processed the attached image which looks fine on my (uncalibrated) monitor. When I print it however, the skin tones are way too dark, and look like fake tans. I have not had this problem before with this monitor/printer combination, and not sure if anyone has any suggestions. Faces have been processed in Portrait Professional which is probably a mistake since this was just originally a quick candid snapshot that my fiancee took with my camera one day when I was not around that she asked me to edit for her. She was not shooting in RAW, so it was just the large JPG as a starting point. It was a REALLY busy background with a lot of people standing in the background, etc. I did the best I could with the JPG, but for some reason, it looks terrible when printed.

I am eventually going to crop this to just show the upper half of their bodies and turn it into a "landscape" orientation image if I can get the crop ratios to work out.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.





--
James

 

[GCam]

do you have the original? gc

 

[Doublehelix]

do you have the original? gc

Sure. Here ya go.





--
James

 

[gordonpritchard]

The image looks fine. I think your printer is at fault. One easy test is to place a neutral grey step wedge as a reference in the image. This one has been split into 21 steps going from black to white in 5% increments.





Since it is a synthetic image it is a known and measurable image. It should look neutral on your screen and you should see all 21 steps - black should look black and white white.

It should print as you see it (although it's quite possible to lose the 95% grey). If it doesn't then you know the printer is at fault.

BTW this is one of the tests that I do when I use an unknown outside print service before I send my proper images.

best, gordo

--
My photos: http://www.gordonpritchard.blogspot.com/
My sketches: http://thesoftpen.blogspot.com/

 

[GMack]

I like your pre-post processing one better (the second one you posted).

You may be trying too hard on the saturation and hitting the contrast too much as seen on my monitor. I'd get one of those color checker cards by xRite (old MacBeth) and play with it for a while and/or include it in the scene as a reference.

Too many takes on what is and not is a good skin color without some reference to go by. Color labs loved them when they were in a film roll as they had a reference to shoot for.

Mack

 

[Sunshine_boy]

I have processed the attached image which looks fine on my (uncalibrated) monitor. When I print it however, the skin tones are way too dark, and look like fake tans.

I am eventually going to crop this to just show the upper half of their bodies and turn it into a "landscape" orientation image if I can get the crop ratios to work out.

Original





Hello James...

First my admiration for the looks and poise of all three girls. They are all absolutely gorgeous but I fell in love with one of them, at first sight, for her lovely complexion and endearing expression...

My congratulations on the edit you did in isolating the three girls from the 'crowd'. I thought you did an excellent job.

On examining your edited image I find that it has an excessive amount of cyan, way too much for fair skin people. Maybe that was a result of the flash firing, I don't know, but the presence of excessive cyan would 'tan' the prints I think.

I reduced the cyan carefully trying to keep the other colors in good proportions. See what you think and please tell me if it prints better than before as I am experimenting myself with skin tones a lot lately.





Regarding cropping, I agree it will be a good idea, as you say, to turn it into a landscape format. I find that a 4x3 proportion fits nicely:





And finally (for a little play) a sketch painting "dedicated to the one I love"...





--
Best Regards
Sunshine

ps If you see someone without a smile on, give him one of yours...

 

[Doublehelix]

Thanks everyone for their help and advice.

I have a few things to try here... (density graph and reduced cyan), and will hopefully get a chance to play around with it again this afternoon.

Thanks for everyone's efforts!

--
James

 

[DUMB4SS]

the reduction of cyan has made the skin tones (and indeed the whole picture) horribly red.

Cyan is a cool colour so removing it will increase the tan effect, not reduce it.

 

[old jim]

They are so beautiful why not take the spots off the girl in the middle?
--
DP Review - Where else?



Old Jim ;-)

 

[Doublehelix]

They are so beautiful why not take the spots off the girl in the middle?

Thank you, they are beautiful! And personally, I think they are beautiful just the way they are!

They are teenage girls posing at their prom, not models. Just because we can, doesn't always mean we should. If these were paid-for senior portraits, I could cross that bridge and ask them if they would like me to do some additional touch up work, but this is just a quick candid between 3 best friends.

At this age, everything is a self confidence issue, and by removing too much in the way of "spots", we emphasize something that is perceived as being "bad" or wrong. Remember, this is a candid not a portrait.

Acne is a different issue however, and I have no problem getting rid of blemishes.

--
James

 

[Doublehelix]

the reduction of cyan has made the skin tones (and indeed the whole picture) horribly red.

Cyan is a cool colour so removing it will increase the tan effect, not reduce it.

Do you have any other suggestions that might help?

--
James

 

[RetiredInFlorida]

James, to crop the image in Landscape your girl friend may be leaving you. she most likely wants to have the dresses seen.
the work you have done is good. just correct the skin tones.

set these numbers and then play in the reds in the order i posted to see the slight changes

Selective Colors > Yellows-blacks -43%, Reds-yellows -20, magenta -13, red +2, blacks -18

--
Mike

 

[RetiredInFlorida]

forgot to say Play with Opacity on Selective Colors Layers - this is what i got at opacity 80%

i found a few things you need to touch up

for dark lines and eye circles - make a copy layer - remove lines and circles with the patch tool - move Opacity slider to bring the lines back in.
you can D&B these areas if you don't like the above method

i would select the all the eyes and put then on another layer and sharpen them together. Mask to edit. opacity slider to taste.

i would do the same for eye color only use Color Balance-midtones-Blue to the right-Red to the left. mask to edit. opacity slide to taste



--
Mike

 

[Allen Gerdes]

While there may be a very slight problem with skin tones in this image, I think that you are making too very much of it. It is a very fine snapshot as is and I agree that just because something can be done to an image does not mean the it needs to be.

Would I change it if it were mine? Perhaps, but i would also not be that disappointed with it as shot. In my opinion, had all three young ladies had nearly identical skin tones, then we would not be having this discussion. To my eye, the darker skin tone of the young lady in the middle seems to call for something to be done with the tones of the two outer ones. My thought is to ignore these impulses and leave the image as is.

Regards...Allen

 

[tom60634]

It was not obvious at first (at least to me), but became so when I saw the original.

You mentioned using a Portrait program. I think that the program homogenized the skin tune into a kind averaged out skin tone for all three, reducing the skin tones to the lowest common denominator. Kind of like sRGB is to the other color spaces.

When I post processed group portraits. To do justice to the models I found that I would have to use a separate layer for each ethnicity in the file i.e. negro,caucasian,asian etc.etc.. This of course wouldn't be considered if it was a bad snapshot.

I think it might also matter if you adjusted the skin tones before or after inserting the new background. I found that adjusting the skin tones with the original background allowed me to more easily differentiate between the three skin tones.

The crux of your problem of course is the printer problem (?).

If you have a good profile for your printer and you have a friend who has a program such as ColorThink Pro, you may want to check for gamut problems in the skin tone area. I suggest this because I use it to eliminate much if not all wastage of paper and ink printing out test prints. It helped me tremendously even with a calibrated monitor.

Here's my quick non-critcal edit. I was concentrating on the skin tones, trying to keep the differences believable and attractive.

 

[photogirl44]

My try, 2 views

 

[joey_B]

what printer settings do you use? Does your printer do any postprocessing for itself (look in the preferences), or do you control it through PS. And does your printer have an ICC-profile that you use?

 

[Sunshine_boy]

the reduction of cyan has made the skin tones (and indeed the whole picture) horribly red.

Cyan is a cool colour so removing it will increase the tan effect, not reduce it.

Thanks for your comments.

Here are the CMYK values of the 3 skins in the original image (taken at the sample points shown on each forehead)





For light Caucasian skins, Yellow should be greater than Magenta (not by much, say max 10 percentage points) and Cyan should be 1/5th to 1/3rd of the Yellow. You can see from this table that there was a lot of color incompatibility in the image.

Excessive Cyan gives a cold blue/grey hue which I suspect is the reason why the OP gets dark prints. I am not very sure about it, that is why I asked the OP to let us know if my edit prints better. I hope he does, so that we can draw some conclusions.

Reduced Cyan does result in a reddish hue. I might have overdone it a bit, I don't know but my edited skin tones looked better on my monitor even though they were slightly pinkish. I didn't change it because I was hoping that it would help the print. Let's see what the OP has to say about the resulting prints...
--
Best Regards
Sunshine

ps If you see someone without a smile on, give him one of yours...

 

[benross]

I thought a slight adjustment in perspective also could be a good idea. It distances the 'feeling' of the shot from those paparazzi Hollywood red carpet and parlour shots!
Pity the shoes were cut off. The ladies would've loved to show them off too!

 

[Robert Snow]

James:

This caught my eye, and nobody has thus far suggested it, but if you are using Photoshop, you can take the jpg into ACR and play with your color. In my case, I can correct the overall color much easier in ACR.

If you haven't done so before, you just "FILE > Open As" and set the file type as RAW. You don't get everything that you get with a raw file, but you can play with the color temp easily to good advantage.

bob snow

Doublehelix wrote:

She was not shooting in RAW, so it was just the large JPG as a starting point. It was a REALLY busy background with a lot of people standing in the background, etc. I did the best I could with the JPG, but for some reason, it looks terrible when printed.

James