Graphics → Other graphics → Wedding Red (Tan) Face Problem

25 May 2012, 10:24

hey folks!
i shoot my cousin's wedding last week. of course i wasn't the main photographer but it was my very first wedding attempt. definitely its exciting but at the same time im upset with my results. most of them are either too orange or too red. those kind of skin tones just killed those adorable moments

i messed with desaturation, increasing brightness, increasing exposure & what not but i failed to get red of the red/orange skin.
i know this can be a pretty perplexing issue, i’ve found that any photoshop actions/ presets I’d play to the skin tones would damage other areas of the image(yeah, i know the masking stuff, i actually don't like those actions/presets).

now my question is how can i get natural white skin tone?
i'd love to get tone like link & link

camera & lens info : canon rebel t2i with canon 50mm f/1.4 & canon 100mm f/2.8 macro IS L

edit : i forgot to mention, the couple, both of them are tan i don't know if it makes any sense

Rating 0 Comments 13

meemeez 25 May 2012, 12:29 #

I've had good results recovering from red skin issues using Lightroom with the "PH kidAlbin" preset, which is free from Preset Heaven. It's designed to fix up kids skin, which quite often has the redness you describe. A white balance temperature adjustment and and some fill light on top brings out some beautiful skin on even the bright red newborns.
The "Orange Skin Fix" lightroom presets in VSCO Film also seem to do a good job at fixing the skin without hurting the rest too much.

Failing all that as a last resort you could (in photoshop) to just changing the image to black and white using the Neutral Density option in the Black and White presets and then adjust the red channel to make the skin darker or lighter without worrying about the colours looking strange.

lysaisme 25 May 2012, 13:07 #

I have all the way long, the same problem associated with kind of unsharpen faces. Either my gocus is bad and I focus uncontroled on ear, nose or back ground, either I get that blurry face. I understood that if #1 up-mentioned is a problem of focusing, and if #2 upmentioned is a problem related to hand-holding camera.So....the red/orange-ish is about exposure, meaning over/under exposure, aperture, dof, wb, iso and even shutter priority. Meaning everything basic in photography. If you have used only a portraiture lense is quite strange, if you have used the general, like my 18-105 on a Nikon D7000, is explanable...

rezisrex 25 May 2012, 16:42 #

thank you very much meemeez! despite a bit over exposure, its good and adjustable.

@ lysaisme, i dont understand your point. im not talking about focusing problems. i used fast lenses like 50mm 1.4 & 100mm 2.8 as i mentioned, they allowed me to shoot & focus really fast, so there weren't any problems to correctly focus my subjects inner eyes.
i normally shoot fully manually, and prefer a tad high key/over exposed photos for portraits. i tend to increase my exposure 1 stop or 1 and 2/3 stops for nice skin tones.
hahaha... you made me laugh so hard. i used portrait lenses because that's what a wedding party is all about! :)also because they are sharper, faster and better than any C grade zomeable 18-105 slow lens as far i know. i don't even know any wedding photographer who uses 18-105 slow kit for shooting!

iofdetiger 26 May 2012, 05:50 #

the images you linked to...are of asian descent. They don't typically have as much red in their skin as caucasians. My 9-5 job is a color corrector at a digital after capture lab. Here's what i do with the red faces. Granted this is all in lightroom.

Basically if you have red in the skin, a fast easy way to do that is to go to your hue/saturation/luminance sliders.

You first want to shift the red to be more orange. so say you move the red slider of the Hue tool to the right +20. then you want to make the orange itself brighter. So you take the luminance for the orange and take that to the right +20.

After those two steps, you'll shift the reds to be more orange and you're making the orange lighter. So it tends to make the red cast less noticable.

If it's still not enough, you then can lower the orange saturation by -10 or so points.

rezisrex 26 May 2012, 07:37 #

i've found so many interesting ideas about red face. As per some tutorials/videos, i should have used a flash or a reflector & diffuser or use CMYK method(photoshop) to get rid of the problem.

anyways, thank you very much iofdetiger. can't wait for this

woodlark 28 May 2012, 18:27 #

Forget it mate, and leave the photos to to pro..

StealthWeather 28 May 2012, 20:37 #

I never have a problem with this really, its one of 2 things that I change. 1. white balance 2. I use keri meyers "take the red out" or both.

With KM's action its so easy to adjust the opacity of the action layer until you get the perfect colour on the subject and then mask out the areas of the image you don't want affected. Problem solved :)

If you are worried about your camera settings check what your white balance is set to, most often this is a small over sight that causes a big problem.

iofdetiger 29 May 2012, 00:29 #

To clarify about the steps above, that was all assuming you had a color correct image. Stealthweather is right, the color correction is the most important part. However, you will still run into red faces sometimes even if the color correction is flawless.

storm180 29 May 2012, 05:09 #

To fix the faces and skin tone you can use vivera from Nik Software which you can select certain areas to fix and change tones where you select your points. Also next time shoot in raw and you have more control over your photos in post.

brovic 29 May 2012, 12:14 #

playing with the selective color option in photoshop works for me if i do not want to use an action...which u say u would rather not do....choose the reds and move cyan slider...and move the black slider to lighter...i then normally go into the neutral and play with the sliders there for tweaking ...or magentas etc but normally after playing round there i end up with nice skin tone. you say you dont like masks but it does work for tweaking if some of the photo is affected and you would rather it not be

StealthWeather 29 May 2012, 18:52 #

To be honest I think shooting in anything other than raw is a sheer waste of time and you loose far too much information that could be useful later. Get into the habit early, you will be glad you did. To clarify I am talking about raw images and the editing of them, it's far less effective with jpg. One thing i always do is use adobe bridges viewing, selection function and raw editing before i pull it through to photoshop :)

In my opinion go raw or go home, hehehe

rezisrex 31 May 2012, 06:23 #

@ brovic, thank you very much. its what i've been looking for! now i can easily control the unwanted red or orange tone.

zero43502 16 Jun 2012, 04:46 #

curves adjustment set you white black and grey point and after that you can fine tune the skin
use the dropper tool and mark a clear well light part of the skin and set your panel so you can see info panel and the rgb numbers
green should be 1/3 of the red number and yellow should be a few percents higher then red this will gave you natural looking skin
Asian and Mexican people will have a higher yellow ratio
easy and no actions needed

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rezisrex

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