Skin tone ? Help me fix this

No counterargument from me about 'accurate WB' not being synonymous with 'attractive skin tone'...just a bit more warmth than 'neutral' often is beneficial to most faces. Both of Amamba's photos exhibit a coolish tendency, with the second photo being even cooler (and with a bit of excess cyan) than the first photo.
However, your skin rendition seems a bit 'orange', not merely 'warmer'. That orange appearance might be closer to reality than simply 'warmer' (as rrblint's rendition appears to be, in addition to being 'more saturated' than OP), but without white/grey to establish where on the color tempertature axis or the green-magenta axis, any inherent orangish skin tone is a guess. Excess in orange would show up when both the skin tone and the neutral target showed up orangish.

I have taken the OP second photo (example 1) as a starting point and rendered four additional interpretations. All four are guesses, without some reference area.

Wilt wrote in post #17407046
This comment points out the advantage of taking a shot with deliberately inserted neutral tone (white or grey) in the shot, for color balance purposes. Yes, it is not always possible (or convenient) but it has its advantages.

Catch-22: The ones where it's not possible or convenient, are the ones that need the most work: Performances under mixed-color stage lighting.

I've told the girls in my performance troupe that I'm going to pin a little neutral-gray tag to each of their costumes. They thought I was joking

tzalman wrote in post #17406843
The edit below was done in LR5 with my skin tone overlay and (on the brush) Saturation -33, Exposure -0.5.

The coloring of the skin works, but I might have added some negative clarity, definitely brushed over the lips, and maybe brushed over the eyes (the whites are still a little blue-green on this non-calibrated monitor).


Personal preference, I like paler, lighter-colored skin, so my lighting and processing tends to make everyone a little paler than they really are.

nathancarter wrote in post #17407262
Catch-22: The ones where it's not possible or convenient, are the ones that need the most work: Performances under mixed-color stage lighting.(

Only a fool attempts to achieve 'accurate skin tone' under stage lighting, when the color gels are seriously contaminating 'neutral'...only if there is a patch of skin in 'neutral light' should one even try...

Thanks, #5 seems to have the most pleasing skin tones, can you tell me what you did to get there ? That's closest to what I'd consider natural looking.

The orange tones in difficult lighting conditions is unforthately a problem specific to Sony 16 MP sensors. Canon tended to be more red or yellow in same situations, which was (to me) easier to deal with. Orange is harder for me to fix.

I can't say precisely what I did to eachof the multiple renditions (in spite of my earlier comment about excess cyan), but I can tell you that in general I did zero adjustments to any individual hues...I simply adjusted WB (yellow-blue axis)!

What values do you have for temp and tint ?

As I did not start from RAW, I have no WB values in Ktemperature...I have only 'warmer' from the starting point!

In a number of cases, I made incremental adjustments, like an adjustment to Photo1 to make Photo4, then further adjusted Photo4 to make Photo5...Photo5 is +13 warmer (using LR3) version of Photo4.
In other cases, I brought Photo1 into PaintShop Pro XVI and used some of their automated tools (Zippy the chimp edits) to see how automated tools might render the photo (using Photo1, I used the PSP automatic one-step adjustment to make Photo3). So I have no idea what was done as values on the color axes, since the automated tool did not disclose what it did.

That is why I summarized earlier, "I have only 'warmer' from the starting point!"

To me, the WB color wheel in DPP makes it much easier to find the most pleasing skin tones.

With the Temp+Tint method of other software, I was never certain if perhaps they should have benefitted from yet another iteration.

tzalman wrote in post #17406843
Yes, it is an excellent feature, although I didn't like their presets and made a couple of my own. And when used on the global image it can sometimes really throw off the overall WB, but since C1 uses a layered interface, it is really best on a selection layer.

Using layers in C1 made me think about how it might be done in LR. It is generally said that LR doesn't do layers, but this isn't quite true - the brush, grad filter and rad filter are in effect layered locally over the image. What it doesn't do is blend modes other than Normal. At any rate, I made a local adjustment preset whose single parameter is the color overlay in a skin tone that I like (H=30, S=75). I brush over a face and then use minus Saturation to control the blend of the overlay; at 0 the blend of the overlay with the original color seems to be about 50/50, at -100, because the base color has become grey, the color is all from the overlay (30/75) while the luminosity is from whatever the grey is. Therefore, an Exposure adjustment may also be needed.

The edit below was done in LR5 with my skin tone overlay and (on the brush) Saturation -33, Exposure -0.5.

Hosted photo: posted by tzalman in
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forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

Sorry, this one looks too New Jersey

Well, here's my latest attempt at fixing WB:

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

Amamba wrote in post #17408475
Sorry, this one looks too New Jersey

Hey, hey, hey...don't be hatin' just cuz we gots the "sun" here in Joysey

kv968 wrote in post #17409718
Hey, hey, hey...don't be hatin' just cuz we gots the "sun" here in Joysey

spray tan booths?

For some people, yeah

Well, here's the last and final (for now at least) version. This time I used a pixel editor (PSP4) - just a different set of tools.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/q4GU​uc