Having problems with skin tones

I shot my first engagement session the other day.
Yes it was free.
Yes I still suck, but I'm learning.
No, this is not the best image from the day.
Yes, I will post more if you want to see them.

Ok, now that we got the pre-reqs out of the way, I'm hoping for a little help. I have processed many people images and never had any issues. This couple however is for some reason giving me a little problem. She was VERY pale and he was very olive/brown (Italian). When I get things adjusted to where he looks good, she has a yellowy hue or she is washed out and ghostly looking. When I put some life into her skin, he then doesn't look right. What do you guys do in this situation?

I included an image straight out of camera, no PP at all. If someone would be kind enough to give me some pointers on where to go with it I would be greatful. Oh, and I use Lightroom.

Thanks a bunch.
Chris

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I had a wedding last summer where the bride was very tan and the groom tried to catch-up with her. Unfortunately, he was just red. I had to go into color balance or hue saturation on each shot and adjust his skin tones. To make matters worse, the bride had on a strapless gown and had a huge halter top tan line across her back which I also had to adjust on shots from the back. It's time consuming, but can be done.

I just a wedding where he was pinkish and light skinned, she was Hispanic and golden brown. That's life. Who am I to alter it?

take a few minutes and learn how to mask out subjects in your photos in your photo editor program - your setps will be slightly different depending which program your using but, anyway what your goal is to adjust her and then him and then flatten your 2 adjustment layers to get the finished image.

First off, never shoot anything without a Whibal (or another white balance tool). It will save you TONS of time post processing. If your white balance is correct, you'll save yourself a lot of headache later down the road.

Heres to show you what a simple whibal can do with no other corrections.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

You will need to use skin colour by numbers on this with a couple of corrective curves layers masked in. You do have a couple of points in the image that can be used as possible White Balance reference points though, so if you shot RAW you may want to try that first?

Firstly, if you haven't done it - calliabrate your monitor. It is the single most important thing you must do to ensure correct post processing and without this you really are wasting your time - so buy yourself a basic Spyder or a Huey. Also ensure that your camera is set to sRGB colour mode.

i gave it a try:

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by TINYPIC

jj1987 - seriously, just straight out of the camera? just a jpg from RAW?
I never get colours and light to look like that

Hangerhead wrote in post #3287599
jj1987 - seriously, just straight out of the camera? just a jpg from RAW?
I never get colours and light to look like that

well usually a picture outdoors in sunlight not gonna need that much work.

but, that is an awesome shot!

my go at it:

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

As a side note, if you are knowledgable in PS, definitely use layer masks and work on it that way.

howzitboy in my opinjion still to much magenta / bcap way to much yellow in red channel
i would try selective color - red channel ..take out 25% of cyan, 15% of magenta and 5% of yellow ...it will vary but more less try those proportions but i would start with your original one ..warm it up by couple hundred K and go from that ...good luck

jj1987 wrote in post #3273155
First off, never shoot anything without a Whibal (or another white balance tool).

Or you just shoot in RAW.

well raw is always the best way to go but custom balance not only fixes color temperature but is most likely diminishing color shifts between channels and through out the sensor