Skin tones

[greenmorpher]

Someone will probably tell me I have overlooked something here but I wish to put forward this thought -- what about a designated skin tones corrector?

PictoColor offers its iPortrait plug-in for P'shop which is point and click to correct skin tones.

Now, I have no doubt that a skilled operator (i.e. lots of other people on this forum) can correct skin tones easily and even more easily with PL32's excellent tools.

But I can't -- and some automation in this area would be much appreciated.

It would make a nice addition for the "Digital Camera" group of tools.

I haven't actually looked at iPortrait, but the kind of thing I would envisage is perhaps five or so choices of skin colour which matched the various basic skin colours. You would then use one to set the basic parameters for your picture, then click on the skin tone area of the photo to apply that color. If that wasn't right, then you could repeat with another colour.

The fit wouldn't need to be perfect -- I find the big problem I have is NOT fine tuning but getting bad pix good enough to be fine tuned. So I want a tool that automatically removes the yellow cast when I have taken a picture in tungsten light when I had the camera set for daylight, or the blue cast that hits when sunlight is set in the camera but the subject was in shade.

That filter would get me close enough to the proper colour for me to adjust it to be just right OR put a bit of bias back into it to give the *suggestion* that it was taken in tungsten, but not have it overwhelm the picture.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[Koyaanis]

It's already there, but it takes some finesse to learn how to use it well.

You might have seen the Tool > Color > Hue/Saturation... tool?

Now here's the "really way cool, most amazing, I use it often, this has got to be the best implementation ever made for those adjustments" way to use it for skin tones...

Open up that tool. Then to get you started, click on Range > Yellow

Now crank the Hue slider all the way to one side. You're doing this so you can garishly highlight the range of yellows that you want to manipulate.

Did you happen to notice that 3rd adjustment slider that came into view when you selected a Range option? It looks like a thin gray bar with 4 adjustment handles on it, between the two rainbow bars showing original and resulting hue ranges.

Now, the center section of that gray bar, the light-gray segment, defines what yellow values that all get changed. The two darker gray areas of that adjustment slider define the range of colors that will be feathered by your adjustments.

Move those gray adjustment handles around until just the skin-tones are all defined by that garish shift you made when first moving the Hue control all the way to one side. Move them to change their ranges, or click and drag on the center to just slide it all as one unit. Lots of freedom here. Make one color-limit's feathering really narrow, the other end of the spectrum feathered wide. It's all up to you. (I also wish that gray control-bar was wider and larger so it would be easier to make finer adjustments, but ... if I'm careful I can use it as needed.)

Got all the skin tones highlighted with that garish Hue shift? Good. Now move the Hue slider back to where it first was. Play with that, and also the Saturation, and Brightness sliders until you find some good settings. DON'T FORGET that way cool slider at the bottom for Intensity! This is like a transparency setting for how much you want to blend your color shift with the original skin-tones under your changes. You might like doing this as a working-layer instead though for even more flexibility, then you can easily use its masking properties and mask-editing brushes to prevent your changes from changing the sand or other skin-toned objects in the image.

How much do you want to bet, that with an evening's practice, you'll be perfectly correcting skin-tone shifts in less than a minute with this tool in the future. I thought I was missing the neat "Manual Color Correction" tool from PSP in the past. This tool in PL32 has that one beat hands-down. It just takes some re-learning to know how to use it, and use it well.

With practice you can use that tool with its "Range" adjuster you can change blue orchids to yellow ones or pink cars to green ones and make it look perfectly normal. While typing this up I loaded it to make sure I used the right names when explaining things to you. I changed a mauve orchid to an blue/green one, looking for all the world like a new species. It doesn't even look like it was done in editing.

I put that Hue/Saturation tool on my main tool-bar, right alongside a CLUT button.

Okay, so this violates your request for one-click-fixes, but that's why I like PL32. This is for people serious about doing their editing the right way. I've yet to see any 1-click tools that work in all instances anyway. Get dependent on that and then you'll wonder how to fix things when the auto 1-click can't.

p.s. The above is the same way to fix purple/blue/magenta fringing in digital camera images. You don't have to just settle for desaturating those fringes, you can make them the same color as the background they ruined. See how much you can do by learning this tool instead of a 1-click-fix?

[Michael Roek-Ramirez]

Hi greenmorpher,

I guess it is not very easy. I some cases might help, but generally I have pictures, where the skin tone is present as well in background or other items.
So.....masking is a must.
Do you agree?

Did you try the Tool-Color-Replace function?
I use this quite frequently for skin adjustments.
In the color list I generated a small range of useful skin colors and use this as a "change to" color. Adjustment 100%, 100%.
Works quite well for many cases.

Regarding easy adjustments there is another problem: You dont have skin only. what about eyes, mouth...
So another approach might be the following:
Supposing you work in RGB range...... switch the "picture info" visible.
Mask the relevant part.
Make a list of R-G-B values of 4 or 5 skin tones you prefer.
Adjust the picture inside the mask by using the +/- R,G,B buttons in order to adjust the value of a specific area you select with the cursor, to the desired value.
Generally this method is even better because it is not "redo if not satisfied" but interactively you can see what happenes.



Regards


Michael

[greenmorpher]

Well, brilliant stuff and two different approaches to get similar results. I'll try them both. But what you are both really telling me is that it ought to be pretty simple to put a "one click" front end on this, so for routine pictures (e.g. family snaps), I can just go through the photos and go click, click, click ...

And then when I want exactness, I can swiftly make the remaining adjustments.

I don't mind behind attached to single click solutions, so long as they work MOST of the time and I have back-up routines like you guys have illustrated for when stuff really needs basic work.

I'm saving and printing off both your posts for experimentation in the near future. Many thanks again.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[Koyaanis]

Well, there's always PhotoTune SkinTune plugin (now bundled into their all in one package and under the ononesoftware.com website), but I couldn't get that to ever work with PL32. It's one of those danged PS-ONLY ones. Then when Gerhard let me know it wouldn't be possible to use that plugin (being PS-ONLY garbage), I started to learn how nicely the Hue/Saturation tool would do the very same thing, resulting in my finding even more uses for it. (see above)

Awwww... c'mon. You can do it! I know you can. You don't need no 1-click crutch do you? What are you? Some kind of color-nuance-nudging nancy-boy? Some kinda photo-editing wuss that we need to hold his hand for every photo he edits? The other boys on the block are going to start laughing at you if you keep this up. Want us to all tighten those training wheels on your trike for you before you crash again? A 5-wheel tricycle isn't enough? Should we send you a photo-editing sky-hook so you don't fall over when you stand up?

(How's that for an incentive program? Want more? )

[greenmorpher]

Well, there's always PhotoTune SkinTune plugin (now bundled into their all in one package and under the ononesoftware.com website), but I couldn't get that to ever work with PL32. It's one of those danged PS-ONLY ones.

I already had PictoColor iCorrect when I bought PL32, and it runs fine with PL32, except that PL32 does pretty much what it does, so far as I can see. The iPortrait plug-in would provide specific automation.

It seems to me to be folly to have a plug-in for such a basic function, though -- I mean, skin tone correction, like red eye, is something there ought to be a simple tool for.

Awwww... c'mon. You can do it! I know you can.

Just tried that -- and encountered exactly my usual problem; I ended up so far from where I want to be that I was lost.

You don't need no 1-click crutch do you?

YES!!!

What are you? Some kind of color-nuance-nudging nancy-boy? Some kinda photo-editing wuss that we need to hold his hand for every photo he edits? The other boys on the block are going to start laughing at you if you keep this up. Want us to all tighten those training wheels on your trike for you before you crash again? A 5-wheel tricycle isn't enough? Should we send you a photo-editing sky-hook so you don't fall over when you stand up?

Wow! This is even more frightening than those Penis Enlargement SPAMS! How do you know me so well? Are you lurking in the back of my computer? Is that you peeping in the window as I work? Whoa! Do I want a sky-hook? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Every time!

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[Koyaanis]

Whoa! Do I want a sky-hook? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Every time!

Well, can't say I didn't try to send you one!
How about this then, do you have Color Washer from http://thepluginsite.com ? It's my most favorite white balancing tool. I sometimes have to take photographs of night flying insects in the most difficult lighting situations, a combo of incandescent (why is that word so long?), fluorescent (dang it another one!), and UV (ah, that's better). Trying to white-balance for that lighting hue disaster and have the colors remain accurate on the bugs is ... to put it mildly, DIFFICULT. ColorWasher plugin does an excellent job in most situations without too much coaxing.

Well, instead of using any of the 5 Auto methods supplied, or selecting an area that should be gray, you can instead select an area that's supposed to be skin. Then click on the color tab and use the manual color "From > To" color swatches. Double click on the "Target" color and select a skin-tone from the mixer palette. Okay, so we're still nowhere near a 1-click solution. I count at least (counting them now, one two, three ...), at least 8 clicks. This of course is after you have that plugin, there's lots more clicks to get it installed. The plugin appears to call up the same fantastic RGB, CMYK, HSV, Gray, Lab, and Color (swatches) color-mixer palette as the one built into PL32 (whoa, I didn't know that, never used it for this before, way cool), so if you save a bunch of favorite skin tones in a PL32 color palette you can turn that plugin into your very own favorite skin-grafting bank!

See if that helps.

(You know, I'm glad I tried figuring out your problem, and revisiting my old one, because I just realized I can build my own PhotoTune SkinTune plugin using the ColorWasher plugin and my own banks of skin-tone palettes in PL32's color palettes. This is going to make me search for a skin-tone color-palette file now. Thanks for acting helpless! )

[Koyaanis]

Hmm... I thought I had a nice skin-tones color palette from my PSP days, found on retouchpro.com (Bruce Beard's Hair and Skin Color Charts) at one time, but that site is gone, and so are its files. Does anyone have a skintones palette?

I found some Canvas flesh color palettes but no way to import them. And they're in some binary format.

I found this text file in my palette folders, but it's not easy to convert:

Code: Alles auswählen

ROWS 11
COLS 7
WIDTH 16
HEIGHT 14
TEXTHEIGHT 0
SPACING 0
R: 000, G:000, B:000 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 023, G:010, B:001 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 027, G:023, B:020 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 038, G:020, B:018 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 035, G:026, B:021 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 041, G:030, B:024 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 048, G:035, B:029 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 051, G:036, B:029 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 056, G:035, B:030 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 056, G:036, B:029 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 060, G:037, B:031 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 067, G:037, B:027 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 071, G:041, B:033 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 071, G:043, B:032 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 104, G:037, B:028 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 099, G:041, B:029 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 105, G:040, B:038 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 107, G:049, B:037 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 112, G:048, B:039 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 109, G:051, B:037 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 105, G:053, B:040 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 117, G:049, B:036 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 109, G:060, B:043 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 119, G:061, B:047 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 150, G:051, B:032 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 139, G:060, B:045 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 156, G:058, B:047 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 136, G:068, B:049 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 150, G:063, B:053 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 157, G:061, B:045 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 151, G:065, B:042 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 160, G:066, B:064 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 167, G:065, B:060 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 147, G:078, B:049 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 149, G:079, B:054 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 165, G:084, B:063 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 167, G:093, B:068 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 169, G:094, B:071 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 172, G:095, B:069 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 173, G:096, B:070 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 182, G:090, B:079 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 171, G:099, B:075 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 175, G:101, B:074 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 189, G:094, B:090 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 188, G:121, B:092 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 188, G:123, B:085 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 198, G:116, B:118 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 202, G:121, B:102 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 195, G:128, B:099 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 194, G:128, B:104 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 198, G:133, B:115 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 194, G:144, B:111 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 203, G:140, B:125 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 197, G:148, B:115 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 206, G:149, B:122 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 207, G:150, B:131 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 199, G:156, B:121 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 209, G:156, B:138 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 221, G:167, B:155 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 221, G:173, B:137 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 230, G:174, B:148 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 226, G:174, B:163 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 226, G:187, B:180 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 227, G:192, B:162 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 226, G:198, B:177 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 247, G:197, B:173 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 246, G:196, B:188 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 246, G:207, B:188 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 255, G:215, B:202 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 
R: 246, G:228, B:220 HV:0.00, SV:0.00, VV:0.00 

[Koyaanis]

Okay, this wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I went through google's image finder, looking for skin-tone charts.

Did some screen grabs of Canvas' cmyk and rgb fleshtone palettes.

Loaded them all up into a PL32 image. Then using the Tools > Color > Reduce Colors option, I took sections of the larger sampler, so as not to reduce too many to 256 colors at a time, and using the "from image" in the Reduce Colors tool, I saved them as PL32 *.pal files. Then using the color palette, I merged 4 of those skintone palettes together.

Well, I didn't like the way the palettes were sorted. So I did the same thing with PSP and did screen grabs of its sorting by intensity or hue options (by hue made them even more scattered), and did 3 sets of 256 skin colors.

Here's the 4x256 sampler set: 1024 Fleshtones PL32 Palette File

Here's the 3x256 sampler set: 768 Fleshtones PL32 Palette Filep

If there was a way to save a palette from ALL the colors sampled in the image I could have provided a 70,182 skintones PAL file.

Umm... Gerhard? Does this suggest a tool idea to include? Any easy way to make a palette file from any image? Just select how many colors you want it reduced to. That 256 colors limit is ... limiting.

(Now watch, someone's going to come along and say, "If you would have JUST double-clicked on that little icon there, it would have done it for you." Never fails. )

[greenmorpher]

Koyaanis sez:

Thanks for acting helpless!

Umm -- you have it wrong, my friend. I AM helpless!

Fantastic stuff you're getting into, but I'm lost. I do have Colorwasher -- it runs in both Canvas and PL32, and no, I haven't ever been able to get it under control either! One reason why I am using PL32.

I get defeated at the point where I have to build a flesh tone -- or select one. As I keep saying I need some tool that will make it right or put me NEAR right. THEN I can make it right.

Beginning from near right, I can make it right ... building up a skin colour is beyond my capabilities.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[Michael Roek-Ramirez]

@Koyaanis:

Definitely you dont need 1000+ skintones! What do you like to do with them?

A set of 15+- skintones is well enough to do what greenmorpher likes to do.
You dont need the "skintone of chinese lady. aged 40-50, living on thhe tibetian border, after 3 hours exposure to the sun". Believe me.
Hopefully I can find my 16 color palette for skintones, cannot imagine to have use for more tones.
Like greenmorpher says: The fine work has to and can be done manually.


Regards


Michael

[greenmorpher]

You've hit the nail on the head, Michael. That's the kind of range I'm thinking of. Probably 3-5 variations in each skin colour group.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[greenmorpher]

If you want to have a look at how iCorrect Portrait works -- and it does NOT work with PL32 on Mac, at least (I just tried with the demo), have a look at their sample pic and their how to documents which you can download from my other site: http://www.marketnow.com.au/iCorrect_Portrait_stuff.zip

It is a 1.8 Mb file.

Interesting stuff. You were going in exactly the right dirction, Koyaanis, it seems -- albeit a little overboard with 1,000 skin tones!

But seriously, given the capabilities already built into PL32, I would suspect that mimicking iCorrect Portrait's utility would be relatively easy (just too hard for me!).

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[lutz]

Are these the Palettes you were looking for?
However, I could only find the image files.

http://www.retouchpro.com/pages/colors.html

another one:

http://www.trimoon.com/skintones.jpg

[greenmorpher]

Hi Lutz

Those are interesting. Where do those dark reds come in, though? To say nothing of the black (0000). Those aren't skin tones to me.

The trick, of course, is once you have a sample of a skin tone, is to be able to have that colour substitute for the basic colour in someone's face when the face, in fact, is made up of areas of light and shade -- tones of that colour.

Is that capability available in PL32 now or are we looking for something new here?

I suppose, in concept, we are looking for something like the wand tool which selects a tonal range within a certain colour when you click on a reference point, and replaces or corrects the underlying colour with the same kind of tonal range.

But then there is also the problem of how to apply it to a face area and not to overlap into hair, clothing, background, etc. Oh! And it is not just face, of course ... there are other areas of flesh starting with the hands and moving right on from there ...

Or maybe a key is you click at the lightest and darkest points of that colour to set the range. Then ...

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com