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In this movie, we are going to color correct this portrait of a photographer
friend of mine. What I want to do in this case is I'm going to go ahead and
select the Eyedropper tool by pressing the I key. Next, I'm going to take a
look at the background. Now I'm guessing that the background of this
image should be neutral and I'm seeing some color in there. It's giving me
the idea that there is some color shift. So I'll hold down the Shift key and
I'll click to add a point there. Next, I need to sample an area of the skin.
Let's say that I sample an area right here, Shift-click, and then I realize,
"Oops! I accidentally put that point in the highlight." Well, that's not
going to look very good, right? So I hold down the Shift key and then I click -and-drag
it to a better spot over here on the skin just outside of the reach of that
highlight. Next, I click on the Eyedropper icon and choose
CMYK Color. Now when I look at my CMYK values, I'm noticing one thing that's
actually quite good. Now my Y percentage point is much higher than magenta,
and that typically happens with darker skin tones. We have a little bit of
a higher percentage difference between our magenta and our yellow. What about
our cyan? One of the things that you will start to discover
is that the cyan amount on darker tone skins tends to be a little bit
higher, a little closer to 1/2. Remember I said that, when we started our
initial conversation about the recipe for getting good color in our skin tones.
Well, let's work on this channel then. We will click on the Adjustments Layer
icon for Curves, navigate to the Red channel, grab the Target Adjustment tool,
and I'm going to hover over this area. Then I'm going to click-and-drag to
bring this up, probably up to about 25% or so. That's approximately 1/2 of what
I have here. Now that might be a little bit too far. So
I'm going to go ahead and bring that down. Then I'm also going to look at my numbers
over here. Why I'm looking for my numbers over here is that if I want this
background to be neutral, these three numbers need to be exactly the same.
Well, this Blue-yellow channel is just a little bit different. So I'll go in
to that Blue-yellow channel and I'm actually going to see if I can color correct
the background there, just bringing that value up.
Again, I was just modifying these two numbers a little bit. So that background
is neutral, but I don't really know if that background is truly neutral, but
what I do is this. My magenta and yellow have a good relationship. Yellow is a
little bit higher. I might need a touch more magenta. So I'm going to go into
that channel, the difference or the range of difference is going to vary, but I
was just a little bit too far for what my experience has told me that the
difference should be. Then I'll go back to that Red-cyan channel,
I'm just going to modify this, go one way or the other. Again, just looking
to try to get this pretty close to where we have had this before. Again, it's
going to be approximately 1/3 to 1/5, or even 1/2 of magenta or the yellow.
Now at this place, I'm right in the range. I also look at my background number
here and say this is pretty close in the range, as a little bit of a color shift
not too much. I don't know if that background was neutral but I'm just using
that to double check my numbers in regards to the skin.
Now let's take a look at our before and after. Here is before and then here is
after. This image is much more neutral, much more color correct. Now at this
juncture, now that this photograph is color correct, I can then further make
subjective edits. We do want to get a neutral color but then,
of course, we may want to modify this even further. For example, now that we
have the correct ratio or relationship, we can then go to our Adjustments
Layer icon, and choose Photo Filter, and then we could warm this image
up. Now in adding this warming filter, one of
the things that we have done is we have added this filter with these good ratio
of numbers. So this image is within the range of our numbers. Here is our
before and then our after. It's just a little bit of a warmer image. We can
see how those numbers are changing as I click this on or off.
Again, at this juncture this is a little bit more of a subjective edit, but
with this particular image, I feel like it needs it. I don't want that
background to be completely neutral. I want a little bit of warmth in that and
I want a little bit more warmth in the skin. So keep in mind, as you are learning about
how to use these numbers and about how to color correct skin, this is a recipe.
It's a starting point. The recipe isn't a law; rather it's a guide that will
help you get better color in your photographs of people.