PP advice and consent --too many greens & blues? C&C please

[ggt]

I got to take pictures of puppys and children today. The blue agility tunnel was a great backdrop for the puppies, but not, I think, for one little girl and her dress. I've cropped most of her face out for privacy issues. I'm just not happy with how her skin looks. I've reduced the blues and cyans. Her eyes are blue, so I masked and fixed them. I worked with the lighting levels and the light rendering, but I'm still not satisfied. Her hair is a very, very light strawberry blonde.

What do you think?



Thanks so much. Her facial expression and the pup's face are such a perfect composition. I'd really like to print this out as a gift to her parents, but the color . . . ..

[Carl in Louisiana]

I could be wrong but try brightening the exposure some and then increase the black point some. Perhaps someone will come along with a better solution though.

[Manfred M]

Way too much cyan in the skin tones. The light from the blue is certainly hitting the skin tones. Overall the tonality is okay. For the highlights, I added 34R and 9G and did not touch either the midtones or the shadows.

I think this is closer to what you are looking for. I suspect that the top of the face might still be too cyan, but that is the part that you cut off. so I'm just guessing.



I did some sampling on the very light skin tones, and looked at the CMYK readings. For a fair skinned little girl like this, there should not be any K component (there wasn't), and the highest value should be Y (it wasn't), so I took the M down a bit (added green +9 in the highlights). The C component should be 1/3 to 1/5 of the Y reading and in some of the sample it was very close to the Y and M readings (so I added red + 34 in the highlights).

[MilT0s]

Gretchen a simple tip to get an idea about color cast is to sample the white of the dog.

I like the Manfred's version much better. I think it is important for such images not to be cold.

[Mike Buckley]

My suggestion comes too late, but this is exactly the sort of situation that tossing a grey card into the scene helps immensely for when you post-process the image. Even if you don't want to spoil the spontaneity of the moment, you can place it there after all the shots have been taken. When skin tones are important, I always use a grey card.

[ggt]

Thanks for everyone's responses --

Grumpy, I am still processing what you have done--thanks for the visual!

Mike --when I read your response, my first thought was of puppies eating the gray card! LOL

thanks again!

[Manfred M]

In the absence of a gray card, there are some "rules of thumb" for skin colours, based on ethnicity that work too. I will also try to find "white" and "black" areas in the image (in this case there weren't any) and will sample for colour casts there.

The gray card or colour card guarantee you have a good, readable target.

In full-blown Photoshop I get my readings using the colour sampler tool and I have it set to a 3x3 pixel sample size. I will look for a light tone, but not blown out, sample of skin. I generally try for 2 or 3 different spots if I can.

I will change the reading value of the sample from RGB to CMYK and look to adjust the colours using my colour adjustment tool as follows (I always use layer masks for this) for light Caucasian skin:

C - readings that are from 1/5 (20%) to 1/3 (33%) of the Y reading
Y - Should be the highest reading regardless of the actual value
M - Should be very slightly below the Y reading
K - 0 value.

[ggt]

Can we all agree it is, at the very least, a very cute composition? teehee

Manfred, I have added your posts to those I've printed out for future reference. That is way too much for me to hold in my head!

Thanks Mike, Miltos, Carl and Grumpy! I will be working to bring a better version for your comments.

[Steve S]

How about reducing the reds and add some lightness to the red, then paint some of it back on her lips so they look more natural.

[Manfred M]

You may find this link more clear than my explanation:

http://www.graphicconnectionkc.com/s...orrection.html