Faces Appear too Red

[Wildey]

In working with images of people taken under a clear blue sky I often have difficulties with color. Many times faces appear too red and the overall color is too blue. I am interested how others approach this situation.

Thanks for you input.

[Mary]

Are these pictures direct from your digital camera or from some other source. I finally realized that my digital camera came with an Owner's Manual for good reason. After I learned to change some settings to match my shooting conditions I got better results.

It was a big learning curve with my supposedly Point and Shoot camera but I am doing better now.

[Wendy]

It could be a slight colour cast on the whole image ... when I get an image with one of those I usually try correcting it with Levels (each Channel separately).

This example is very extreme but it will give you an idea of what I mean.

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pic=1itVY1szdOvVoGUmuruiC1cMxI1ER1


Wendy

[Wildey]

Thanks Mary and Wendy for you input. Most of my images are scanned in slides which are fairly old. Output from my Canon G5 is much less troublesome. In the conditions I described it appears that the problem is that I have two light sources; 1) the blue sky having a high color temperature and 2) the yellow sun with a low color temperature. So some kind of a compromise appears unavoidable.

[Wendy]

Wildey,

You could try selecting individual areas (like the sky) and just try a levels adjustment on one ... then select the next area and do the same. I once had to do that on some old slides that had started to deteriorate, fortunately there were not too many otherwise it could have taken forever.

If you have major problems with them I would suggest you take a look at the Katrin Eismann book "Photoshop Restoration and Retouching" she shows some good techniques for old slides and photographs.


Wendy

[Wildey]

I have the 2001 issue of "Photoshop Restoration and Retouching" book and use the information in figure 4.38 for skin tones. I converted the data from RGB to HSB and found the hue to be a constant of 31 degrees. So far I have found the Photo Filter feature in E3 the easiest way to get the skin tone in this range. The skin tone varies from person to person and therefore another compromise.