Face swap in Photoshop not going well

[Tricon7]

I have Photoshop 7.0 and my attempt at doing a face swap is falling flat. Here's what I'm doing:

1. I use the elliptical tool to select a face off a photo that I want to transplant and do Ctrl+C.
2. I open the image I want to paste the face on.
3. I Ctrl+V to paste the image on.
4. I use Ctrl+T to move the face and size it just right.
5. I hit enter to set the face.
6. I select E to use the eraser tool, and erase off the part of the face I don't want.
7. I create a new layer.
8. I set the blending mode to "color."
9. I click the eyedropper tool and pick a spot just outside the face to sample.
10. I click B to use the brush tool.
11. I attempt to brush the pasted-on face with the sampled color.

However, in this case when I start brushing, instead of a dark peach color for the face, I'm getting a very light peach - totally unlike the background image. It doesn't match at all. And I've tried different sequences - click eyedropper tool first, blending mode color next, brush after that, and swapped the steps, but nothing gives me a matching color for the new face.

I'm at a loss here. Can someone suggest a solution?

[Diana]

Hi,

I haven't used this method to paint transplanted faces, so I'm not sure how this is supposed to work and/or why it isn't.

What I usually do when I transplant a face is on the layer of the transplanted face, I do a Levels adjustment with Ctrl-L, then move the middle slider slightly one way or another until the color of the transplanted face is as close as I can get to the person's original face. Then I may do some cloning, at a lowered opacity, to touch up the edges. And I always clone on a blank layer above the layer(s) being cloned, with the "All Layers" box checked in the options bar.

Sometimes if the lighting is way different from one of the photos to the other, it is very hard to get the transplant to look natural.

Diana