Cannot Get the Correct Skin Tone

Try this on for size, it gives you much more granular control over the contrast manipulation.

https://www.cambridgei​ncolour.com …-contrast-enhancement.htm

Thank you. This will be helpful moving forward!

Kristine2514 wrote in post #18936544

Hosted photo: posted by Kristine2514 in
./showthread.php?p=189​36544&i=i233224808
forum: Critique Corner

I thought I would add the original photo, if it would help

Lighting matters. In shade light turns cold. However I am not seeing the blue you are speaking of. I am seeing a portrait taken in shade light.

There are controls in camera Raw to play with white balance and color temperature.
In fact there should be a "shade" setting which when selected will warm the image producing what should be close to daylight balance or 5000k (kelvin).

Almost always you can fix color temperature issues here and will not require CS or Lightroom tools.

Another issue you might be having is your monitor.
If you are not using a color calibrated monitor for critical color you may be getting played by your hardware.

On higher end machines and monitors you can change the color temperature in the control panel.
If you select 10000k you will see a shift to blue.

Thank you. I was thinking about the lighting and I know I enjoy photos on the warmer side. From time to time I wonder if my monitor is showing true. I do calibrate it but not often enough. If I'm in doubt, I'll send an image to my iPad to see if there is a difference

late to the party, but take a look at some of these:
https://www.youtube.co​m …y=skin+tones+in​+photoshop

PixImperfect does really good on his tutorials

Thank you. I watched some of Piximperfect's tutorials this last week. He is so informative and easy to understand.

Interesting that the two images you posted remind me of the color characteristics of two different films. The first looks like classic Agfachrome with the subtle color and color balance toward the blue. The second has more of the saturated warm Fujichrome look. I love the color balance on that first image. The skin tone looks natural. Nice portrait.

Thank you for your kind comments

I really like this one
https://youtu.be/ecMMp​6Fc_Xg

The skin tone of the original looks good on my system. This is shot in shade and shade is cold tone compared to sunlight which can range from neutral daylight to warm tone during sunrise and sunset. My first recommendation if you are going to work with color is to make sure you have a system that is fully calibrated and has the color gamut necessary for producing color correct photographs. Only then can you be sure you know what you are looking at, and this does not account for variation in the capacity of each individual to see color.

Beyond that is personal taste and dealing with what the camera gives you to work with.

Yes like others have said, I would add a very very subtle curves layer for contrast.

Maybe it’s partly because I’m so used to it now and don’t want to go through all the pain of learning another camera but I love it. It was hard enough to learn the ins and outs of this one. No plans to upgrade any time soon.