Photoshop and Flesh tones

[LoganBlade]

anyone have a math plan for printing flesh tones of different races?

Like a
quarter tone number
midtone number
shadow number

how do you choose them Q--M--S and what color do you use.

I want to try making sometyp of grid that will show degrees of flesh tones and work towards a consistant color correction to get there. Not sure if what i am asking is impossible with no neutral area sample to help make color correct. But i am willing to try anything to make things more consistant and nice

thanks

[TimS]

Unfortunately, even within races there are various skin tones, so I'm not sure you'll ever be able to mathematically define them. On top of this, they will be under different lighting situations, sunlight, flash, etc. Then one person may be sick, another healthy, I can go on and on...

For white people if I'm stumped I'll aim for equal magenta and yellow and about half that value in cyan. However, because each photo is unique, I usually go for overall colour balance. If the trees look like the right kind of green, and the sky is the right kind of blue, then your skin tones are probably the way they were when the photo was taken.

[LoganBlade]

I was thinking that but always hoping. thanks

[born2print]

Originally Posted by TimS

Unfortunately, even within races there are various skin tones, so I'm not sure you'll ever be able to mathematically define them. On top of this, they will be under different lighting situations, sunlight, flash, etc. Then one person may be sick, another healthy, I can go on and on...

For white people if I'm stumped I'll aim for equal magenta and yellow and about half that value in cyan. However, because each photo is unique, I usually go for overall colour balance. If the trees look like the right kind of green, and the sky is the right kind of blue, then your skin tones are probably the way they were when the photo was taken.

So exactly right. Maybe a little more yellow than magenta is all I would add.

[almaink]

Quick hint, try Auto Color in Photoshop. You will be amazed at what it can do for bad photos quickly, especially skin tones.

[kevinf]

There is a book on "Color correction by the Numbers" that may help.

[jem0701]

I saw this on Layers Magazine a while back. It works well for general color correction. The values for CMYK are down at Step 18.

http://www.layersmagazine.com/photog...ectingphp.html

[born2print]

Another culprit of bad fleshtones, is the black curve (too heavy) in digital camera images after converted to CMYK from RGB (with an unmanaged mode change in Photoshop)

[pspdfppd]

I've noticed we get a lot of digital photos with no cyan in the flesh tones...that's really hard to fix with curves.

Must be a better way...cause like when you have 0% cyan...how do you add it without screwing up the highlights in the rest of the photo? Selective color? Dunno

[born2print]

Originally Posted by pspdfppd

I've noticed we get a lot of digital photos with no cyan in the flesh tones...that's really hard to fix with curves.

Must be a better way...cause like when you have 0% cyan...how do you add it without screwing up the highlights in the rest of the photo? Selective color? Dunno

Try channel mixer through alpha masks, steal some "dots" from another channel, like black or a tweaked magenta, etc....
You could also use Calculations in the same fashion.