Skin tones and National Geographic Special Issue April 2018

[odds]

The NG special issue (as stated in the title) starts with an editorial looking back about a 100 years at parts of NG's world view on demographics.

The first article is about a biracial couple having twin girl babies, one black and one white, now 11 years old. Several more articles provide food for thought and debate.

"A Color Wheel of Humanity" is interesting in context of photography. Having matched nose color in thousands of portraits to Pantone colors, photographer Angelica Dass presents 60+ of her photographs to demonstrate skin tone variety. To me, those images also indicate why post processing to the "true", "right" or "best" skin tone is such a challenge.

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Odd S.

[Manfred M]

To me, those images also indicate why post processing to the "true", "right" or "best" skin tone is such a challenge.

Those are very subjective terms and are dependent on many factors especially the lighting.

Getting the "correct" colour is quite easy if the shot is done with a reference card that can be used to get the correct white balance / colour temperature, but that may or may not be the most appropriate choice as a perfectly neutral skin tone may not be the most attractive approach.

[rpcrowe]

I agree with Manfred... With light skinned people, I will sometimes prefer a slightly warmer rendition (never a cooler look). Somehow the warmer rendition seems to make the person look more "alive" and "vibrant" than the "correct" reproduction of the skin tones...

I read the National Geo article and it was quite interesting... I remember one university level sociology class that I took in the 1960's in which the professor predicted that the world would be composed of 100% tan colored people by 2060 and that there would be no more white race to speak of. While multi racial children are fairly prevalent here in California, I think that professor was a bit early in his prophesy