Getting the Green Out of Skintones

I have a tendency to see too much green in skintones so Im putting this up here to see if others think the skin in this image look bad and how I can fix it.

Thanks

They look very natural to me.

Looks fine to me too. The light filtering through the foliage will have a little green to it; that's what we expect to see and it doesn't look bad.

Did you use a gray card or other reference? A colorchecker, if you want to get precise. But, precise color isn't always flattering. Sometimes you want to warm it up a bit for inviting, happy family shots, or cool it down for certain types of cinematic shots.


If you wanna get mathematical about it, you could use a technique called "skin tone by the numbers," in which you individually adjust the RGB curves to force a person's skin tone to be an exact color. But, you first have to know what color their skin actually is, before using this technique to change their skin to that color. Different ethnicities make everyone's skin a little different, but you could stick to a certain archetype and get pretty close (and natural-looking).

Even across members of the same ethnicity the skin tones are highly varied. There's no 'standard white', nor is there a Pantone number for 'Caucasian'.

Like nathancarter said, if you really want to tinker, you'll have to do it individually and I say as local adjustments. Using a grey card or custom WB is gonna mess up the greenery, turning it into a different –unnatural– colour.

DThriller wrote in post #18377457
I have a tendency to see too much green in skintones so Im putting this up here to see if others think the skin in this image look bad and how I can fix it.

Thanks

If you use Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, you can adjust the WB by selecting the WB eyedropper tool and clicking on something white in the image. Not everything that appears white is truly white, but it should get you close then you can tweak the settings to suit your taste.

Hi, I have some WB issues when I take photos of my kids. My daughter has a yellow/olive skin shade and in contrast my son is a fair bit whiter. You wouldn't think it from looking at them but it really stands out in some pictures, my daughter sometimes looks a little green!

The way I get round it is, some pics I just find a middle ground; for those pics I really like and am confident they'll get a big slot in our next photobook, I normally adjust the WB for the boy, and then use a brush to locally adjust the WB (and sometimes lift exposure) of my daughters face. Using raw and lightroom.

It's fairly quick and makes a massive difference, to me anyway, not sure many others really notice!!

I should add that my post doesn't necessarily 'get the green out of skintones'. I too would love to know if there is some global or local editing that could be done to help with this.

Find me one client that would have a problem with this picture.

Monkey moss wrote in post #18377654
I should add that my post doesn't necessarily 'get the green out of skintones'. I too would love to know if there is some global or local editing that could be done to help with this.

Not saying is the case with you, but it'd still be good to pause a moment and ponder whether the green isn't 'in your eyes'. I've noticed that users of Lightroom tend to find anything that's not rosy/magenta 'green', due probably to said program's strong leaning towards too much magenta in terms of skin tones and white balances.

texkam wrote in post #18377672
Find me one client that would have a problem with this picture.

While the client might love this picture, it's our duty as professionals and/or artists to continually improve our craft and skill.

Carry a gray card and have one subject flash it for a calibration shot. Then you can adjust your color balance to your heart's content using Photoshop.

Curious why you had the iso up so high? Skin looks ok, I see some noise on the faces that you could have probably done without.

use the slider in LR and turn the green down.

As stated, people standing in the filtered light of foliage will pick up some green. In your example, I only see a scoche of green in the shadows on the arms of the woman on the left. Easily fixed with the temp/tint sliders with the adjustment brush in Camera Raw or Lightroom.

If you adjust the magenta/green Tint slider by 2-4 points (more than that and everyone'll look drunk), it should balance out what you're seeing. As others have mentioned, what you're getting is color cast from all of the foliage there.