skin tones

Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 17 Location: oklahoma

I have been doing senior portraits and am wondering how do I get better skin tones. I just bought a warming filter and was going to see how that would work. I am interested in getting the warm smooth looking skin tones. What will help-filters, photoshop, soft lense? Thanks for your help. I would appreciate any input on this to try. I have a studio plus do outside pictures.

Joined: 18 Nov 2006 Posts: 288

Sounds like you have it. Warm is a color temperature issue. Filtration or white balance or lighting would affect that. Smooth is usually a matter of diffusion in portraiture. A soft effect filter might be an answer or, as you say, Photoshop.

Joined: 13 Jan 2007 Posts: 245 Location: Maryland

Several things have to do with achieving good skin tones.

If skin doesn't come in the studio great, then you have to make it great.
Lighting, color balance/correction, makeup, etc, all have a factor in that, plus all skin is different.

Make sure you are color correcting your images/skin tones before sending to the lab. (assuming your shooting the 5D here).

Smoothing can be achieved with makeup, filters or photoshop.

Sometimes it'll come out the camera perfect, other times... whoa.
Basically, the way I think is, if it needs it... do it.

Care to post some examples in order to offer better advice?

Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 17 Location: oklahoma

I would submit a couple of pictures if someone can explain how to. I am new at this and am not sure how to post photos.

Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 17 Location: oklahoma

I would submit a couple of pictures if someone can explain how to. I am new at this and am not sure how to post photos. Thanks

Premium Member Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 2020

littlenet wrote:

I would submit a couple of pictures if someone can explain how to. I am new at this and am not sure how to post photos. Thanks

Okay. Lay one on us.

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 7:37 pm

littlenet wrote:

I would submit a couple of pictures if someone can explain how to. I am new at this and am not sure how to post photos. Thanks

you'll need some space to put them in, I recommend an account at

www.photobucket.com

I have used them for all my forum photo sharing and the service has always been great. It's free and fairly easy to use.

Once you have your photo uploaded they give you three pre-made tags for posting the photo on forums, the one you want is the one enclosed in [img] tags, I think it's the bottom one of the three on photobucket. Just copy and past that tag (with the [img] tags) into your post here et voila, one posted photo.

Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 63

I found these tutorials useful for skin tones and retouching.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1078946
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1170442

The main tutorials site for smugmug is quite useful:
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1100284

Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 17 Location: oklahoma

I am going to attempt to post a couple of images for any input on skin tones or improvement. This is my first attempt at posting images so I hop

e it w

orks.

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 4:25 pm

the smaller the light the harsh the skin tone is

just look and observed the difference in light during the day

cloudy and direct sunlight

during cloudy day the skin tone will look better and smooth cause the clouds acts as a big diffuser and a lesser shadows too

while during no clouds the light is so harsh cause your source of light is so small (like a small bulb light up there in the skies)

that is the diffuser function to diffuse the light to soften the skin

hopes this helps

Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 114 Location: Knoxville, TN

This particular kid's problem looks like either rosatia or subdermal scaring caused by acne. This is where makeup comes in.

OK, Anatomy for photographers 101: The outer layers of skin (the epidermal and dermal layers) are mostly make of semi-transparent cells. Under normal lighting conditions they will appear to reflect the light at the surface. Because of the harsh nature of lighting sufficient for photography, the intense brightness of it, and the directional nature of the camera's lens, it is common to have the light reflect of the subdermal layers, especially if the skin is oily or wet. The subdermal layer will display signs of damage to the skin for considerably longer than the outer layers of skin...in some cases for life. Signs of acne, sunburns, and prolonged dryness can last for months or even years.

Usually a good dose of powder is enough to make the light bounce off the skin rather than the subdermis, but in extreme cases concealer and foundation are necessary. It is in the best interest of a photographer to take a modeling class or two to learn about applying makeup. Selection of makeup is important as well. Skin is mostly yellow (dispite it's shade), so make sure you buy powders and foundations that use yellow pigments rather than pinks. I use a powder called Corn Silk which is made from corn husks without any pigments added; it looks great on clients reguardless of their skin tone.

Secondly, make sure your white balance is spot on. In the second shot that is your biggest problem.

Cheers,
Michael