skin tone troubles

[titan307]

i have been told practice,practice,practicing so i have been taking pics of my daughter. She is a redhead, and from my experience most redheads dont have much pigment in thier skin and therefore are quite pale. How do you adjust for this? different poses, lighting, or is this a post processing matter? hope im not offending anyone. if i do i am very sorry. i posted some shots in the critique forum and nothing was mentioned about the tone but to me i just cant get it right. if one part of her is good another is too bright or washed out. if i try and adjust for skin tone i lose the natural color of her hair.

[Davidoff]

Could you post them here, or a link ?

[FlexiPack]

Yeh if could post the pics here that would be good.

Do you have photoshop? Just off the top of my head you could try a red, blue or green channel luminosity blend. Often one of the RGB channels will have more skin detail than the others so if you make a channer mixer adjustment and set which ever channel has the most skin detail to 100% (or mix and match the %'s to desired level) and tick the mono box, click ok. You'll be left with a black and white photo. Then change the blend mode of the channel mixer layer to luminosity.

Adjust the opacity to suit and mask out all other areas except the skin with a layer mask.

Without seeing your shots though it's hard to say if that'll work for you

[Pekka]

Seek for light that supports the subject. Have you tried a cloudy outdoor light, diffused and darker? Sideways fill flash? If skin looks washed then change light direction and amount, expose slightly darker. Do not seek solutions from camera settings only, seek solutions mostly in quality of light and composition.

[Doug Pardee]

I presume that you mean the shots here (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=377535).

There is no EXIF for those shots. Are you shooting Raw or JPEG? If Raw, what Raw converter are you using? (For Raw, colors are set entirely by the Raw converter program.) If JPEG, what picture style and settings are you using?

Assuming that you're shooting JPEG: the Portrait picture style is notorious for running overly pink to red, and most people that are happy with it have reduced the contrast a notch or two and increased the color tone a notch or two.

For JPEG, proper white balance is always the first step in dealing with color. Then selecting the appropriate picture style, then adjusting the picture style. Canon also likes to give different color renderings for sRGB and Adobe RGB, so changing the colorspace setting can have an effect.

One other thing to be aware of: some flash units (especially built-in flash) can put out a fair amount of infrared light in addition to visible light, some people with pale skin will reflect a disproportionate amount of infrared, and digital cameras tend to be a bit sensitive to infrared (despite the manufacturers' best attempts to block IR with a hot-mirror and absorb what isn't blocked with an IR absorption filter). The bottom line is that in some cases, some people will look overly red when shot with a digital camera and a flash (http://blogs.smugmug.com/great-prints/2005/07/25/the-dark-side-of-digital-cameras/). Try shots with and without flash to see if that might be a problem. If it is a problem, consider getting an external flash unit.

[titan307]

these two. i moved her in several places even tried the opposite side of the tree and they still came out this way. ididnt have this trouble with my other two daughters one blonde the other brown or my wife which has dark hair and great skin color.i didnt use flash all sunlight. it was extremely bright and about 3pm. the second one is not as bad because i cheated, (photoshop) but i dont want to have to cheat that way. any suggestions? or at least get alot closer.

[René Damkot]

i didnt use flash all sunlight.

I'm pretty sure I see a shadow of a flash in #1, and a catchlight in the eyes in both...

First is overexposed, second is over saturated IMO.

[RedHot]

#1 does look like a flash or simply over exposed image. Most times, images need minor tweaks in photoshop and that is definately not cheating. You can also shoot RAW which will give you greater control over highlights, midtones, and shadows during RAW development of the image - similar to a darkroom.

[elTwitcho]

I think using a slightly warmer white balance would be a good start. This one feels a bit cool to my personal prefferences

[PhotosGuy]

Seek for light that supports the subject. That light looks a bit too flat to me. Maybe if you used something at the side to cut off some light on her face?
VERY simple "outdoor studio" (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=122297)