In order to correct the skin I want to affect the RGB numbers to get the ratios in CMY to change. In fact, this skin color is very reminiscent of an artificial tan, spray-on type of color that is sometimes used by body builders in competitions! In the numbers above, that average would be 53 – cyan at 10 is just a little low, not horribly low, but that combined with the slightly elevated yellow (relative to the magenta) confirms my suspicion that the skin is just too colorful.
As I said, the cyan should not be much lower than 1/4 of the average between magenta and yellow. The two columns are identical at the moment because no adjustment is being made, this allows you to compare adjusted with non-adjusted numbers. The screenshot above shows a reading from the skin color at the chin – there are two columns of numbers here because I had already added a Curves layer when I did the screenshot, normally there is only one for RGB and CMYK. Ideally, yellow and magenta should be closer to each other than either is to cyan – cyan should be between 1/3 and 1/4 of the average value between yellow and magenta, and yellow should be a little higher than magenta – for a fair skinned blond, about 10% higher! A good skin tone is all about the ratios of CMY in the secondary color readout. The key to evaluating a skin tone is to look at the CMYK numbers at the upper right of the info panel. I always use the info panel numbers in Photoshop to help me decide how to approach color correction.
The original isn’t horrible, but it suffers from what I call “pumpkin skin” – just a bit too saturated an orange color. The original image is on the left with the final corrected version on the right. I also find it extremely helpful to get as much practice as possible working on other people’s images, as this helps us become more objective about our own work! I have the good personal fortune of benefiting from the work of my fiancé, the amazing Bobbi Lane, who happens to be a really extraordinary portrait photographer! I will examine my decision making process in a recent color correction of one of her images in this post.
I have found that careful attention to basic color correction principles can help re-calibrate our subjective evaluation of an image to a point where effective adjustment choices can be made.
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