Skin color nightmare

[dalippe]

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I'm trying to print a picture of my son taken in shade, with lots of green (grass, shirt, etc.) presumably reflecting different amounts of green onto different parts of his face. I'm having lots of trouble getting a reasonable, consistent skin color in his face in LR3. I can get rid of the overall green cast in his face, but often end up with unnaturally purple eyebrows, a residual green/yellow tint in a band across his forehead (most pronounced near the temples). All of the problems are visible on monitor, but (to me) are even more pronounced when printed.

 

It may be that there is no avoiding local color correction is ps (not my strong suit), but before I start that, I'm curious if anyone more expert than I has any hints and/or would be willing to give a quick try themselves in a way that lets me see what you've done (save changes back to dng in LR3, layers if photoshop is involved). A jpg of my best so far is below, and a link to the original dng can be downloaded here: https://files.me.com/dalippe/qmq6b6

 

The shot is also a bit out-of-focus in the face, but I'm confident of my ability to handle/hide that in photoshop. But tricky, especially local, color correction is not my strong suit.

 

Shot with M9 and 50 cron, at ISO 160.

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

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[Overgaard]

Here's my quick take on it in Lightroom. Of course, with sunshine and shadow in the same image you will have to make some choices as to what should be warm or cold.

 

Here is the image and the Lightroom settings.

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[aymoon]

Hi Dalippe,

 

I'm just learning Capture One and thought I'd see what it could do with this. I only spent a few minutes on it, and i think the face is still a bit reddish. This could be exaggerated by the colour profile of your printer perhaps?

 

Anyway, this is the process I used... hope it helps.

 

I first changed the basic settings to remove overall green cast (via color temp + tint)

 

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Then isolated skin tones and shifted hue to the left to remove green cast on skin. This made the skin more reddish/purple, so I reduced saturation on these colours to bring it closer to flesh tones.

 

 

This is the final output:

 

[dalippe]

Here's my quick take on it in Lightroom. Of course, with sunshine and shadow in the same image you will have to make some choices as to what should be warm or cold.

 

Here is the image and the Lightroom settings.

Thorsten,

 

Thanks! The skin tones in your version look much better than in mine. And the fact that you replied to my message gives me a chance to tell you that I look at your web site and blog from time and time and very much admire your work, although I've never had occasion to communicate with you before.

 

If you don't mind, I'm curious how you got to the final color balance. I usually try to get as close as possible just using the white balance sliders. I never would have gotten your superior result because before making the saturation adjustments, the skin color looks all wrong, and that would have prevented me from trying that white balance. Assuming you set white balance first, how do you think about your goal when setting white balance if you'll later make such strong adjustments with the HSL sliders?

 

Also, when you said that there were sunlight and shadow in the same image, you don't mean on the front of the face, do you? I was primarily concerned with getting that part correctly, and was happy to let the sunny background be an unnatural color.

 

Thanks again for your help, and I hope it isn't too much bother to answer these questions.

 

Regards,

 

David

[dalippe]

Hi Dalippe,

 

I'm just learning Capture One and thought I'd see what it could do with this. I only spent a few minutes on it, and i think the face is still a bit reddish. This could be exaggerated by the colour profile of your printer perhaps?

 

Anyway, this is the process I used... hope it helps.

 

I first changed the basic settings to remove overall green cast (via color temp + tint)

 

[ATTACH]225251[/ATTACH]

 

Then isolated skin tones and shifted hue to the left to remove green cast on skin. This made the skin more reddish/purple, so I reduced saturation on these colours to bring it closer to flesh tones.

 

[ATTACH]225250[/ATTACH]

 

This is the final output:

 

[ATTACH]225252[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the feedback aymoon. I've never been able to get comfortable with C1, but it seems some can get very good results from it.

[Wiggi]

The problems with skin color I had in PS/ACR and C1, especially by shooting with flash.

 

I guess it is a problem with the color profiles and / or profile curve this RAW-Converters use. With CinePaint / UFRaw the skin color is nearly perfect. When I have pictures shot with flash, I am taking the BT.709 profile curve. But a working CinePaint-Version is only for Linux available yet.

 

This is the main reason why I am changing from PS and C1 to CinePaint.

[Dan States]

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You know, on my monitor the original looks the best. I think you may have to season this to your own taste using both the color temp balance controls and the individual color saturation and luminance. LR3 is very capable and I'm sure you'll find levels that do what you need.

 

Best wishes

Dan

[pphuang]

Personally, I get the best results with local color correction when there is tricky lighting. It is really not too difficult - selecting the face is pretty quick with the magic wand tool in PS (I use CS5). I will then place this in a separate layer and adjust this independently from the background. Using the hue/saturation tool, I will concentrate mostly on adjusting red and yellow. Then, I will use the color balance tool and tweak until it looks good to my eye.

 

I do not think that there is any set formula to do this well, and there are also many differing opinions as to what "looks good." However, it is important to have a properly color calibrated monitor. Otherwise, your prints will be all over the place.

 

[hoppyman]

Thorsten's interpretation looks better to my eyes than what I attempted here.

FWIW, from your original zeroed out, I ended up with exposure +.98 and WB at 6750, plus some recovery for the brights

Regarding white balance you may like to experiment with the WB eyedropper rather than the slider. The whites of clothing are very likely full of brighteners and are not neutral of course but you can sample from the whites of the eyes in this instance, for example. Click around and see what you like. One trick is to try to only view the face when previewing as the predominance of greens and yellow really throws your perception off

To substantially remove the reflected colour in those areas of left temple/ear etc I think that you do need to use a localised correction. In Ps you could Quick Select the area/s and try shifting the yellow for example. In LR you can try various properties with the Adjustment Brush to limit the changes to the specific area.

 

Have you thought of the workaround? You can make a nice BW image from this!

[dalippe]

Thanks for all the replies! Unfortunately, I'm now viewing on this on my laptop rather than on my calibrated monitor, so I can't judge the various versions everyone has been kind enough to offer.

 

But just to clarify one point that I'm afraid might be confusing people: My main concern is with getting the front of the face right (not even that worried about ears). When I talk about the need for local correction, I'm referring to the fact that it is hard to get even the whole of the front of the face correct. At 100% (or in a print), many color balances that work well for most of the face lead to unnatural purple around the eyes and eyebrows (even Thorsten's version has this), and/or a yellow-green streak across the forehead. I'm *not* worried about selecting the face and balancing its color separately from the background-- that I could do. But adjusting and blending the streak across the forehead might be more challenging.

 

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to comment on this. I didn't expect so many replies so quickly!

[dalippe]

Thorsten's interpretation looks better to my eyes than what I attempted here.

FWIW, from your original zeroed out, I ended up with exposure +.98 and WB at 6750, plus some recovery for the brights

Regarding white balance you may like to experiment with the WB eyedropper rather than the slider. The whites of clothing are very likely full of brighteners and are not neutral of course but you can sample from the whites of the eyes in this instance, for example. Click around and see what you like. One trick is to try to only view the face when previewing as the predominance of greens and yellow really throws your perception off

To substantially remove the reflected colour in those areas of left temple/ear etc I think that you do need to use a localised correction. In Ps you could Quick Select the area/s and try shifting the yellow for example. In LR you can try various properties with the Adjustment Brush to limit the changes to the specific area.

 

Have you thought of the workaround? You can make a nice BW image from this!

 

Perhaps I'll give in and try the local corrections in PS, but probably starting from Thorsten's version. I often use LR local adjustments for tone, but have never tried to use LR's seemingly clunky ability to add a local color hue as a way to correct color casts.

 

I do often punt on tricky color and go to black and white. But in this case, all of the green (grass and Jersey, not face!) really is intentional. My son is joining a family line of long suffering Jets fans (aka Gang Green) so it it wouldn't be quite be the same picture in B&W...

[zlatkob]

Color is a matter of personal preference. Of the versions posted so far, I like your original the best. The skin color is good; I expect it to take some color from the surroundings. But the eyes and jersey are a bit dark. Here is my version.

 

P.S. In LR's Camera Calibration, I've used Process 2010 (Current) and Profile Adobe Standard.

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[Fotomiguel]

This is my try with capture one. I like how capture one deal with the colors

 

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[hoppyman]

For my personal taste both Thorsten and Zlatkob have posted very good versions of your file. Since the LR adjustments are all there in both posts it is very easy for you to duplicate each and possibly edit a little more if desired.

Starting from those you could then add localised corrections to the areas of concern with the Adjustment Brush if you wish (or go to Ps of course).

As an observer I found the various versions very instructive . A good example too of how flexible Raw is with the different converter tools.

Do let us know how you get on and post the final version that you come up with.

[aymoon]

I agree with Hoppyman

[rob_x2004]

Mate, its probably pretty much screen dependent, and I dont know what the real colours actually are.

If you Ctrl-D in RGB, (or Ctrl-J I think in photoshop) and depress the green curve (Ctrl-M) and erase through you dont even have to try. Fifteen seconds, thirty seconds if distracted? You could try harder and some people would think its right and some people woudnt like it depending how their screens are set up. So until you run it to print or your final destination in the size you intend, its a bit hard to say. You can even get tricky and assess the hex numbers. So do what you want I guess.

I think its worth learning your layers for problem kids.

 

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Bugger. I just gogled the jersey ... its red isnt it:o:(.

[dalippe]

Finally had a chance to get back to this tonight. I'll have to see how the print looks tomorrow in natural light, but I have a version that looks much better to my eyes on screen. I ended up sticking with my original LR settings, except that I added a local adjustment to bring down the brightness of the face a touch because I think one of the reasons Thorsten's color looked more natural was that the face wasn't quite so bright. I then did extensive local retouching in photoshop CS 3 with lots of hue/saturation layers and color balance layers.

 

Gone are (most of) the purple hair, purple eyebrows, green bands on forehead and temples, etc. I also sharpened up the slightly out-of-focus facial features (eyes, nose, mouth), enhanced the catchlights in the eyes, and brightened and color corrected the teeth. Hopefully most will agree this is a big improvement.

 

Thanks again to everyone for your responses. It is great how much help people on this forum are willing to give to others.

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