Changing skin tones with adjustment layer fails

Question

Hi,
I am running PS CC 2014 and all I want to do is to adjust a skin tone to match it to the rest of the bodys skin color.
I have watched some videos on YouTube but my PS doesnt seem to work that way and I wonder why.
My workflow:
Copy background layer.
Quick select area of body where skin tone has to be changed
(If necessary: improve selection)
Now create adjustment layer with gradiation curve
Select with double click midtone pipette and select one point of the "good skin tone" (also pressing CTRL at the same time when selecting it)
Confirm with OK.
Reject box which wants to take over skin tone as standard color.
Click with pipette in the previously selected skin area which has to be changed.
Instead of adjusting the color into a good skin color, this area turns into a strange orange color.
All I can do now is to walk through the single RGB channels to makle adjustments and hope to get anywhere
near the expected result.
Where have I gone wrong ? Where does the orange color come from ?
Any proposals how to get to a reasonable result ?
Preferably with this workflow. But all other ideas are welcome, too.
Thx.
Arnold.

Answer 1

For what it's worth: I have found that when sculptural modeling is involved, such as the in the hand, working with Curves in LAB (where tone is discrete from color) produces the color change more naturally and provides greater control over local contrast. You may want to consider that alternate approach. In this sample, the left forearm provided the reference color and I chose to lighten the tonal scale a bit.
One off-topic comment: A shorter than normal focal length lens creates a foreshortening that makes near objects disproportionately large in relation to the rest of the object or scene. In this instance, consider its effect on the hand-head sizes. I would suggest that a focal length at least 1 1/2 times normal would be more appropriate.
Good luck.