Thread: Help! Skin is driving me batty (pic heavy sorry) - edit post 18

I did Andrew's 8 year photo shoot yesterday evening. He brought along his best friend, so I got some cool buddy shots too. But I'm in editing hell. I'm taking a break, pending responses from you girls. (I'm physically and mentally exhausted at this point - I need to make myself walk away from the computer after this post).

Here's the one I think I'll use for the wall. I'll crop it 8x10 with mainly his face, but I want to PP it as a whole before I crop in case I want to do more with it later.

1. Total PTE on this - but I'd like to know what you did

Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 51 mm
ISO Speed: 200

This is SOOC with some tweaking in ACR ... but it seems too warm (I just did a preview of this post, and it doesn't seem as warm here as it does in PSE - why?)



So then I brought it into PSE and did my levels play (ala Kelby with the dropper). I'm not sure how I feel about the tones. And I don't know skintones for RGB (I tried googling it with not much luck - I will have to search ilp when I'm not so drained).

After previewing this post before submitting, I am not loving this edit, I'm trying to figure out how to get it right and I trust Kelby's stuff. But I think this is what's draining me ... someone tell me I'm good from the start with SOOC-ACR and that I shouldn't have touched this one.



2. Andrew and his best buddy ... well, his friend has very light hair, almost white, and very reddish skin. Andrew has dark hair and olive toned skin - I have no idea how to edit this so they both look like they normally do. This is SOOC, other than tweaking in ACR.

Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 33 mm
ISO Speed: 400



3. Is he too bright? I'm not sure I'm going to use this for anything, but I think this is the only full body one I have of him that's decent. Again, SOOC-ACR

Exposure: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 40 mm
ISO Speed: 200




4. The hand chop is bothering me, but it's a nice one of Carson (he's not as red here), so I'm keeping it to print for the boys. Am I seeing green in Carson's hair? ack!

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 48 mm
ISO Speed: 200




5. Andrew's favorite - he wants it printed 8x10 for his room. The shadows bug me, but he's happy with it. (the ones after this would have been awesome if I had increased the SS - I blew his face in about a dozen shots after this - his ear is actually blown here)

Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 53 mm
ISO Speed: 400




The following three I'm definitely going to play with texture on. (thanks for that tip Stacey!) I have some great textures, and am looking forward to playing. But I'm still unsure of colors as a starting point. In ACR, it seemed okay but now I feel like something is off in all three of them.

6.

Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 28 mm
ISO Speed: 400



7.

Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 33 mm
ISO Speed: 400



8.

Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 30 mm
ISO Speed: 400




(btw, I did get Carson's mom's permission before sharing him here)

Haven't finished reading the rest of your post, but wanted to quickly say that the color on the SOOC of #1 is lovely!

Seems like you've got the same problem with your PSE that I had with my Photoshope CS4. My color never used to match what I was seeing in Photoshop while I was editing. I finally discovered the "view" -> "proof setup" -> "custom" option which tells photoshop to see the colors the way that my calibration hardware/software has it set up. I don't know WHY it does not do this as a default, but it doesn't, so for every photo I process, I have to go go to view, proof setup, and custom and select the name of my saved calibration profile. I don't know if your program has the equivelent, but there is a nightmare of problems in trying to get your photo editing software to show colors as they truly are. Seriously, for me it was a NIGHTMARE!!!!

I agree with Amber, the SOOC with tweak is much better than the levels edited one which looks purple.

It's late and I don't have time to go through the whole thing right now, but calibration and PS and browsers are HELLISH.. it took me forever to figure out what was going on..

in a nutshell, what amber suggested will only show you what others (non calibrated people) will see, which is also what YOU will see in all non color managed browsers and applications.

color managed : PS and Lightroom, Windows Vista and Firefox after version 3.5 I think.
non color managed: IE, windows xp

So depending on where you are looking at it, you will see sometimes VASTLY different color. What amber said to do (softproof using your monitor calibration profile) should match what you see in your jpgs with IE, and turned off it should match what you see in firefox.

BUT, you MUST save your jpgs with the "Embedd ICC profile" checked, otherwise your resulting Jpgs WILL NOT look like what you see in PS.

Hope that helps..

Originally Posted by becoming-mom

What amber said to do (softproof using your monitor calibration profile) should match what you see in your jpgs with IE, and turned off it should match what you see in firefox.

I find all this color profile stuff SO confusing, but this seems backwards to me. When I turn the softproof on, the color matches what my color managed Firefox shows, not my non-color managed IE which matches what PS shows with the soft proof turned off.

I will be forever plagued by this color stuff!

I hope you mean that the "embed ICC profile" thing should be checked when you save, not un-checked...correct? If not, then I've been saving things incorrectly for a really long time.

here is a good thread I read that I learned a lot from. it's on skintones.
http://ilovephotography.com/forums/i...owtopic=377972

whenever you get some free time you can read. I read the whole thread because he writes replies to people's questions, etc.

I think #1 is my favorite I've seen from you ever. Honestly.

And for the color profile stuff...I'm totally lost.I'm SO confused there.

I really like the first photo Gwen. I think your edit is too cool. The first one is great! I don't have any advice on skintones....sorry. I think they look fine though.

As for the last ones with the textures....have you tried them in b&w? I feel like it's the purple that's throwing them off. Maybe that's just me though. Love the texture though!

I have to agree about the colour in the first one, it's GREAT! The second one is WAY TO cool, and makes him look a bit sick!

I can't help much with colours because I'm still learning all that myself but I just wanted to let you know, you're not the only one that is getting frustrated! I hope you start to feel better about these photos because I think they are great! I really like the tough guy look in the last couple! haha to cute!

Originally Posted by AmberBella

I find all this color profile stuff SO confusing, but this seems backwards to me. When I turn the softproof on, the color matches what my color managed Firefox shows, not my non-color managed IE which matches what PS shows with the soft proof turned off.

I will be forever plagued by this color stuff!

I hope you mean that the "embed ICC profile" thing should be checked when you save, not un-checked...correct? If not, then I've been saving things incorrectly for a really long time.

Yes, by "checked off" I meant checked, not off if that makes sense (I edited it to avoid confusion!)

Amber, I don't really know what to say because clearly your set up can't be wrong, your skintones always look great, but I'm almost 100% postive that you are never supposed to use your monitor calibration profile as the one to edit with because it is basically showing you the difference between your profiled and non profiled monitior.

Wait, scratch that, if you don't have your default color profile in windows set to your monitor, then if you softproof using the profile your colors will look correct, but you aren't really using your own color profile then - I mean technically you are just to edit it, but its a very unstandard way of doing things. It would become really obvious if you were using lightroom because color managed apps like photoshop and lightroom reference the windows default profile and set their colors accordingly.. so because there is no "softproof" option in lightroom, you would see all of your colors differently in lightroom than in photoshop, and also throughout windows vista (wouldn't matter in xp because it's not colormanaged anyway) because those programs are not using your calibrated color table.

I hope that makes sense!

Originally Posted by becoming-mom

Yes, by "checked off" I meant checked, not off if that makes sense (I edited it to avoid confusion!)

Amber, I don't really know what to say because clearly your set up can't be wrong, your skintones always look great, but I'm almost 100% postive that you are never supposed to use your monitor calibration profile as the one to edit with because it is basically showing you the difference between your profiled and non profiled monitior.

Wait, scratch that, if you don't have your default color profile in windows set to your monitor, then if you softproof using the profile your colors will look correct, but you aren't really using your own color profile then - I mean technically you are just to edit it, but its a very unstandard way of doing things. It would become really obvious if you were using lightroom because color managed apps like photoshop and lightroom reference the windows default profile and set their colors accordingly.. so because there is no "softproof" option in lightroom, you would see all of your colors differently in lightroom than in photoshop, and also throughout windows vista (wouldn't matter in xp because it's not colormanaged anyway) because those programs are not using your calibrated color table.

I hope that makes sense!

OH, I'm dying of confusion. All I know is if I don't select that custom option, after I'm finished with my edit, when I open the image in "preview" or upload it to the internet, the color does not look like it did when I was processing it in Photoshop. I'm using Windows XP Media Center edition. CONFUSION!!! I checked my color management settings, and it's set to 1-Plug and Play Monitor which is the name of my calibrated color profile...the same thing I set the "custom" option to in Photoshop.

I thought that since Photoshop was color managed I wouldn't have to do anything to see the colors properly, but maybe it's my Windows that is the problem. Fortunately, right now what I do in photoshop (when I soft proof) is matching what I see in my color managed Firefox.

Anyone know a good article about the topic? Looks like I have some more reading to do.