Normalizing Skin Tones

[Rick]

Here is an interesting challenge, which I am sure others have encountered. I was recently asked to put together a slide show for a funeral.I had some digital images myself, received more files from relatives and was given a lot of hardcopy prints to digitize and incorporate into the show. Most of them required some kind of tweaking, particularly the scanned images to minimize dust spots (thank heavens for Lightroom’s Spot Removal tool). The main difficulty that I encountered was trying to get the different skin tones in various photos of the deceased to approximately match. I realize that the tones would vary with the light, but there was a lot of tonal variation even with similar lighting. My question is whether or not it is possible in Lightroom (or even in Photoshop) to establish a single target skin tone and then adjust all the images to match that standard?

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Photoshop does have a "color match" tool. I have never had much success with it but you might try that if you have Photoshop.

If you figure it out a lot of us would love to know how in LR. Shooting basketball, for example, with faces up high or down low (near the yellow floor, except when it's a bright color in some areas), LED's from advertising signs... Even in a burst I'll get a different white balance needed on each shot as the play progresses.

There's another complication -- some scenes should probably NOT have the same tone even for the same person, e.g. a person standing in the sun versus standing in the shade; if you match skin tones everything around them will look unnatural.

If the slides are shown sequentially (as opposed to in a collage where all are shown at once) I think you will find that just getting somewhere in the right ballpark is all you need.

 

[Rick]

Thanks Linwood. I would prefer to resolve this issue in LR (if I can), as my LR knowledge is substantially better than my abilities in PS.

I appreciate that I cannot get the skin tones to always look identical due to different pictures having been taken with different light sources. However, that being said, I would hope that I can get common light sources to look substantially the same e.g. pictures taken by sunlight at the same time of day.

LR sync allows you to apply the same changes to another image, I think what I am looking for is a way to apply changes to achieve the same result - something quite different and perhaps not possible using LR alone.

They are being shown in a slideshow rather than a collage and probably I am one of the few people that notice (along with other serious photographers), but it would make ME feel much better if the skin tones were closer.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

I have attempted two ways to do this that were less than satisfactory but feel free to experiment.

The first requires some near neutral common item (e.g. in my case a soccer ball) to be in each shot. You sample from it and note the temp/tint values. Assuming it is not quite neutral the image will be wrong, so adjust white balance to be right, and note the difference (e.g. tint up +5, temp down -800). Then find the same object in another shot, sample from it, and make the same temp/tint adjustment. The problem is that these are not simple offsets, and the approach works only if the shots are nearly the same native white balance AND if the illumination on the common object is the same.

The second has more promise but I find it almost impossible to implement: You sample the skin tone on the master, and let's say you get 80/70/65. Now go to another one, and sample the same place on the skin. Let's say you get 70/50/50. Adjust the combination of tint/temp/exposure until you get it to 80/70/65 (or close). The problem is you can't see the sampled values while moving the sliders. You can, however, do it this awkward way: You click on the number to the right of the slider (as if you would enter a number - which you will in a second) then you move the mouse over the sample point and do NOT click. The sample values appear on the histogram panel. Now you can change the value by typing the number and NOT hitting tab or enter. Backspace one out, enter another, observe, etc. Awkward. But worse, it's not like you have an R and G and B slider, you have to adjust them in combination to get the right value.

This yields (at least for me) two things: A closer match, and a real headache. I gave up, I just do it by eye with a reference image.

I'd love to hear if you find a better way. I really think there's a serious value in a "Set this image's white balance to yield a good skin tone" with either a sampled skin tone or a range of "normal" you choose from. I find especially after a late shoot, and later night editing, that my eyes just no longer know what is "right".

 

[Stephen Sepan]

Speaking of skin tones, Linwood touched on something I read about a while back: the ratio of colors in skin tones.
That subject is covered in more depth here: https://digital-photography-school.com/skin-tones-using-lightrooms-color-curves/.
I hope this helps someone -- It was new to me and I was glad to find out about it.