Need help with African-American skin tones

I had the opportunity recently to do portraits for a beautiful African-American family, but since this is out of the ordinary for me I'm not sure I'm getting their skin tones right in post. I'd appreciate any help I can get. Here's the image (please view it in a color-aware browser or program):

It looks to me like there may be a bit too much green tint. Did you shoot near a canopy of tree leaves?

kirk

kirkt wrote in post #15804850
It looks to me like there may be a bit too much green tint. Did you shoot near a canopy of tree leaves?

kirk

Good guess! I did. This was in the shade under a tree, lit with 2 bare 580EX flashes on a light stand at camera right. It was greener in the original so I slid the green/magenta slider to +16, which I thought was a lot.

Original WB (auto on camera):
Temp: 5300
Tint: 0

Current WB:
Temp: 6059
Tint: +16

Maybe not magenta enough then? How about this with tint at +25:

KirkT might be correct; and I'd also pull down the exposure by about 1/3 stop. If you look at the top of the father's left shoulder its almost pure white indicating strong side lighting. That's also evidenced on the left side of his and the baby's forehead. But oddly enough the mother's arm should be shaded but it appears too bright.

PixelMagic wrote in post #15804929
KirkT might be correct; and I'd also pull down the exposure by about 1/3 stop. If you look at the top of the father's left shoulder its almost pure white indicating strong side lighting. That's also evidenced on the left side of his and the baby's forehead. But oddly enough the mother's arm should be shaded but it appears too bright.

Here's -1/3 exposure, +20 shadow because I was losing definition in the darkest areas like hair. Third time's a charm?

Add back a bit of contrast (either the slider or the tone curve) and you're good to go.

^^ I agree. Maybe add a tiny bit of vignette to burn the edges? Nice shot and nice edit Yohan.

kirk

I have the tone curve preset set to medium contrast but lifting the shadows might have reduced the contrast too much so I'll play around with that a bit. Definitely going to add some vignetting as well but wanted to get the basic skin tones right first.

Thanks for all the help, guys. Having more than one set of eyes made the difference here for sure.

Along with the vignette I would do some very light burning on the mom's right arm to match the tonality of her face. You need to go very light though; without something like a 5% opacity brush and build up the effect.

African-American skin actually naturally has quite a bit of blue in it...

The OP would be fine with some blue added to the blacks.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #15806218
African-American skin actually naturally has quite a bit of blue in it...

The OP would be fine with some blue added to the blacks.

I concur....a slight bump of the blue and drop your exposure 1/3 stop.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #15806218
African-American skin actually naturally has quite a bit of blue in it...

The OP would be fine with some blue added to the blacks.

I think the others were right in that there was a bit too much green in the original version, so sliding the tint over to magenta was a good move.

As far as temp I'm hoping that at this point it's a matter of preference in terms of warmth. As previously mentioned I usually end up on the warm side of things temp-wise, and I think the 3rd version posted above reflects that. At your suggestion I just now tried it with a lower temp of 5663 instead of 6059, and it looks good too but is a touch cool for what I'm aiming for. If you think what I have now looks bad I'd like to know, but hopefully it's still within an acceptable range and is just down to differing styles.

I'm at that point where whatever I stare at last looks the best, so I go back and forth on picking a final version I feel like I'm close though either way, and changes made if any at this point will be minor.

First one is too yellow in the skin tones.

Opposite of Yellow on the color wheel is Blue.

Nice to see a discussion of color/post processing theory. I created an action based on Dave Cross' Threshold Adjustment Layer that identifies the Highlight, Shadow and Neutral points in an image. I ran it on the second edit posted and it indicates the neutral point is on the upper point of the right sleeve of the girl in the middle. After adding a Curves adjustment layer and clicking the gray eyedropper on the neutral point it suggested subtracting blue and adding green to achieve a truly neutral image.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #15806328
First one is too yellow in the skin tones.

Opposite of Yellow on the color wheel is Blue.