white balance pb: Geisha skin tone at sunset looks strange

[anda_m]

<p>Hi all<br>

I was at this japanese festival near my city and I photographed a beautiful japanese dancer on stage. She was wearing a lot of whitish-powder makeup and was lit exclusively by the setting sun. I read all forums on the proportions of cyan, magenta and yellow, but I'm having a tough time trying to get her skin tone right. The warmer one is closer to how I saw her and the bluish one is closer to the "right percentages", however none looks right. Don't know what to do anymore. Can someone help? Now it's too late to have a gray card, etc...thanks so much.<br>

<a href="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14444012-lg.jpg">http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14444012-lg.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14444013-lg.jpg">http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/14444013-lg.jpg</a></p>

 

[diane_madura]

<p>They both look pretty good to me. Is your monitor calibrated?</p>

[jcuknz]

<p>+1 Diane ... have you tried blending as your two are opposites ?</p>

[anda_m]

<p>Thanks so much. Yes, I did calibrate my monitor. I just combined them, it looks overdone :-).<br>

I will keep the warmer one as this is how I remember seeing it. Thanks again.</p>

[paddler4]

<p>doesn't the notion of "right percentages" assume a specific skin tone? both a good shots. I would keep the one that looks like you remember it.</p>

[anda_m]

<p>Indeed, for each skin tone the percentage is different. Thanks</p>

[hjoseph7]

<p>Both look fine to me, I like the second one because it's warmer and reminds you of the color of a setting sun. Sometimes you get weird blueish skin colors early in the morning and orangy colors during sunset, maybe try shooting raw next time and adjust in DPP.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>You've over exposed the skin tone which flattens all detail (modeling) in the girl's face. Did some edits in Adobe Camera Raw and included all edits to correct plus some added sharpness for web viewing shown below.</p>

<p>You have to convince the eyes on high contrast scenes like this that you are viewing soft powdered skin with variations of tone that hint at a nose, cheek bones, chin and the curvature of the area below the nose and under the eyebrows so our eyes can accept why that face is one flat warm color. Just one flat blob of one color is what makes it look not quite right.</p><div></div>

[charlie_novice]

<p><br />Following the direction of Tim's analysis, you could try these steps on the warm version:<br />* Overlay the image on itself using soft light. (Sorry, I don't have any Photoshop; these are generic descriptions of things I did in Picture Window Pro.) This is a subtle addition of contrast.<br />* Apply local contrast enhancement, a variation of sharpening. You can show the powder on the skin.<br />* Reduce the HSV Saturation curve at the lower end. It gets the face away from the reddened look and toward the white powder.</p>

[anda_m]

<p>Thanks so much.<br>

Tim: I do shoot in RAW, but I just couldn't adjust it properly in Camera Raw, I changed the temperature, the tint, even tried the presets. Indeed, the probelm is overexposure. I am a beginner using photoshop and to photography in general, please correct me if I am wrong: You have added a clarity of 40 in camera raw, What does it mean wb+5? Tint?  And you have used the tat to decrease the highlights on her face? Thanks a lot for your time, I can't wait to try it at home (now I am at work)!<br>

Charlie: I will also try to duplicate the layer and blend it one itself using the soft light mode, never did it before. How do I apply the local contrast? Also in camera raw or with curves in ps?<br>

Thanks a lot for your input!<br>

 </p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>they look good to me also.. question of personal preference at that stage.</p>

<p>let me just offer some suggestion;</p>

<p>1_when you apply sharpening, do it in 3 step, capture / creative / output...</p>

<p>step1 is aim to give the raw file is sharpness can be done in camera raw or in photoshop.. step 2 is where you want some details to be even more sharp you do this with a combo of your prefered sharpen method (i like smart sharpen) and a mask.. in that case, eyes, lips, clothes.. not the skin as you never want it too sharp.. and not the hairs as it quickly look too digital, artificially sharp.. so no step 2 on face and hairs.</p>

<p>2_Following Charlie advice about adding quickly contrast, just so you know, you dont have to double the background for this effect (and many effect that require in the old day of doing it) by simply taking a adjustment curve (adjustment level will work also) dont put anything in the setting of this curve, simply hit OK and change is blending mode to overlay (big contrast) or i prefer softlight (softer contrast) and set the opacity of this layer to whatver suite your need.. i like 30% normally.</p>

<p>You can also apply it only to certain part of the image by using a mask..in this case the face.</p>

<p>3_Local contrast enhancement is good too use with any kind of image.. it really help getting this depth feeling.. how to do it?</p>

<p>as soon as you open your image, first step is to apply a Unsharp mask filter set to 20-20-0 to your image.. work all the time, and you will ask yourself how come you didtn do this to your image before. a little trick i use as a retoucher ; )</p>

<p>if you use the clarity slider in camera raw you dont need to to it in photoshop after.. is one or the other.</p>

<p>4_color by number is good when you want your skin tone perfectly neutral.. but in that case, since you shot it under sunlight, and seem like the end of the day.. its normal to have a warmer skin tone.. color by number is good.. but you have to also add the relation to the light source. Thats why i think both look good, but the wamer one look better in that context.</p>

<p>5_i rarely add + anything in tint as i always find that since the camera (digital camera whatever the brand) are always on the redder side.. i much prefer to remove some tint by using something like -2, 3 as it clean the red out of the skin, making everything more natural.</p>

<p>6_i always start my raw development using the adobe camera neutral in the camera calibration, as again, this setting is really good about giving you a good starting point, at least with studio shot / portrait shot.. it open the shadow, tone down the highlight, remove this red cast... basically.. i use it on everyshot while importing my image in Lightroom / ACR</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>anda,</p>

<p>Those settings may or may not work exactly has seen in my posted revision on the Raw file since they were created from editing an already gamma encoded/pixel based image. Raw edits encode differently. You may need to adjust.</p>

<p>The +5 was just taking a bit of the greenish yellow I saw in the file using the Tint slider of WB. Since only you know what the skin color is suppose to look like you'll have to judge for yourself. Not sure by what you meant that it just doesn't look quite right. Only you know what that should be.</p>

<p>I can tell you for certain you can do all edits to fix the image in the Raw converter. I'm assuming you're using Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. </p>

<p>I just want to point out that luminance (especially when over cranked as in the face with a lot of pancake makeup) can affect the appearance of hue/saturation to where the viewer can't distinguish whether the makeup color or the warm light is creating that particular hue/saturation level. We want to look for the level of neutrality in the white of the eyes and in other neutral objects in the scene to tell us whether its from filtered light/warm color temp or the color of the pancake. There is no real neutral looking white in that image except for the shiny spectral portion of the fan.</p>

<p>Note the white of the eyes are still kind of warm when usually they should be kind of on the bluish side. That tells us the color of the light is having a major influence on the color of her skin instead of the makeup. These are optical tricks on the viewer's eyes that trigger your natural sense that something doesn't quite look right. </p>

<p>You're looking for what I term optical white. I finally found something that perfectly demonstrates this weird effect in my local grocer's circular. I noticed the white flesh of the apple which makes it appear they've printed an opaque white ink on top of the yellow dingy newsprint and printed a tint of cyan and magenta ink on top when in fact there is no such white under color. It's an optical effect that paper manufacturers use to make white appear more intense and bright using optical brighteners in the form of blue violet hues embedded in the paper. See below.</p>

<p>The only way to trick the eye into <strong>not</strong> seeing something's not quite right is to reduce luminance and saturation of the face and/or add a lot of blue to WB to get the whites to look white.</p><div></div>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Below is a demo you can try to get optical white back into the image while still giving the impression the subject is being lit by a warm light.</p>

<p>The version on the left is just clicking on the whites of the eyes (on the jpeg) to get neutral white and then I added a bit more magenta with the tint slider in ACR-(adjust to taste). Of course now it goes too cool and severely de-saturates the warm hues.</p>

<p>The version on the right is just my increasing saturation by +30 in ACR.</p>

<p>After further examination I could've made the left version more blue violet to get the whites of the eyes to appear more white and then increase saturation. Adjust to taste as usual.</p><div></div>

[anda_m]

<p>Tim, thanks so much for your input! It's better, quicker and more to the point than a workshop! You first showed me what I was doing wrong: I was trying to get neutral skin tone while the light was warm. That's why it looked strange, I couldn't name exactly the problem. So, I will definitely keep the warmer version and work on that. Again, I have to put the work on this image (and all my photographic work) on hold as until next month I'll be travelling...I am so impatient to be back..thanks and have a great weekend</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Glad I could help, anda. Have a safe and enjoyable trip traveling.</p>

<p>I can relate to your problem with this image because it was what I was facing with my first photo restoration job displayed on my iMac in my PN Bio page. The original had faded and turned yellowish and I couldn't distinguish what was skin tone from regular aging of the print because the photographer had over exposed the face similarly where there were no distinction in features except for eyes, nose and mouth (glowing face) and I was running in circles trying to get it to look right.</p>