Dark skin tone, poor lighting

I suspect I know the answer to this, but thought I'd reach out just in case.
I have some video footage of a speaker with very, very dark skin who is standing against a white background. The lighting is only overhead florescent. As a result he looks almost like he is in silhouette. I've been playing with the saturation, contrast and other levels a bit. But in order to get any kind of facial definition, the footage ends up getting very grainy and flat.
Any suggestions on how to correct for this? Is this more of a Final Cut problem? I'm using iMovie 11.

I agree that it will be difficult to correct this through color correction. I would suggest that you do the best you can, which might be to show the speaker in silhouette.
I would then enhance the video by using the Cutaway Feature. (also called B-Roll). So you could superimpose photos or other videos of the speaker, photos or videos of the topic, charts and graphs, keynote or powerpoint slides, etc. to provide viewer interest while the speaker continues talking underneath.
For more on Cutaway, see this Tutorial.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/imovie_09_stone.html#cutaway%20pip

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  • Canon Pro9000 Mark II prints dark color tones muddy on gloss paper

    Boss accidentally bought gloss print paper, but I figured that might work out for our art renderings. However the ink bleeds... strangely, only on dark color tones. Image is below. It's a Canon Pro9000 Mark II.  It seems to be dark tones that bleed only. The light gray is perfect, and even a well-saturated yellow-orange looks decent. It doesn't appear to be the saturation or amount of ink that is the problem, but the darkness of the color. Is it the printer, the paper, or the ink? Is there a solution?    

    It really doesn't matter if you don't have the proper profile for the paper.  Do you?  If not you really can't use that paper at all.  You might try to see if another profile will work but that is mostly fool's play.  The correct profile is mandatory. Most good paper suppliers provide the correct ICC profiles for their paper.  Canon, Red River, Moab, Artic, etc.

  • Achieving brownish skin tones

    I'm seeing this browner skin tones "look" a lot in fashion photography, almost like an instant tan that works for light and not so light caucasian skin tones. So far I am flumoxed (sp?) as to how to create this look. Someone suggested warming up the white balance, then backing off saturation and luminance on the orange (-15 and -20 respectively), but I'm wondering whether anyone knows of presets and/or other techniques that one can implement in LR for batch-processing a large set of photos.

    I believe the correct spelling is "flummoxed". Anyway, I change skin colour in Lightroom often by using the colour brush and the relevant intensity slider and play with both until I  get it the way I want. The problem is you need a mask so as not to get any surprises in the rest of the image. This means batch processing isn't your ally. There are programs out there that specialize in one-click portrait skin adjustments and they do a pretty good job but even so, you'll have to verify each image which defeats the pupose. Good luck.
    Brian

  • Skin tones in LR

    Skin tones in LR often seem to look pasty and flat. I've been reading Lee Varis's book "Skin", and in it he says Caucasian skin tones should have a roughly equal amount of yellow and magenta (with yellow between 1 and 10 points higher) and about 1/4 to 1/3 the amount of cyan.
    Most of the pictures I take of Caucasians and import into LR actually have yellow as the lowest value, with magenta and cyan being roughly equal. These skin tones look pale and somewhat pasty:
    When I adjust this same image in Photoshop using Lee Varis's method, I get the following results:
    Even though the numbers are "correct" in the second version, I think it has gone too far in the other direction.
    In any event, I'd like to know 1) if others have the same problem with the way skin tones appear in LR, 2) if you have found a good way of color correcting for skin in LR without exporting to PS. I'd like to get the color as accurate as possible in LR so I don't have to edit every image in Photoshop.
    Thanks.

    I am a pro, I shoot primarily for magazines in my area, have been doing so for over 10 years now. I shoot A LOT of people. Here are my thoughts for you:
    1) The top photo was shot in an open shade area, this creates a color balance/temperature problem. It is too blue for a daylight setting, yet not blue enough for a cloudy setting.
    2)Using a whibal or other reference card for skin tones is very hit or miss. They will give you a very accurate balance of rgb values, but rarely if ever give the most pleasing skin tones. It is a good stating point however, especially for large groups with mixed ethnicity.
    3) BY the numbers is a good way to go, I have used it often, since learning it way back in the 90's. However I hardly ever work with in the cmyk color space. There for I have adopted the numbers for use in an RGB space.
    Here are my numbers for Caucasian skin tones. This was averaged off of 7 different samples in varying lighting conditions. This is also based on LR's rgb 0-100 scale:
    Green Should be 11% lower than Red
    and Blue should be 13% lower than green
    Example R-------------G ----------- B
    84.6---------78.1----------71.2
    60.3---------52.5----------40.8 measured in shadow
    78.8--------- 70.2---------60.3
    87.2--------- 80.5--------- 74.9
    78----------- 70.2 ---------64.7
    With the exception of the shadow reading above, each came from a slightly different Caucasian skin tone....
    Also skin tones are going to change wildly based on shooting conditions. You almost can not make a preset for skin tones unless you shoot in a controlled studio environment and shoot the exact same way each time.
    Other wise best advice I can give it to use the above number samples as a guide and learn to "see" skin tones. After you "See" them than you will not need the numbers any longer, because you will know what feels right.
    I also tend to back the vibrance slider down 1 or 2 notches if skin tone is very important to the image, but I am sure that is due to me shooting a D60
    Also...Every skin color under the sun can be balanced by the numbers once you know the percentages.....experiment with white balance and hsl until you find what looks right for THAT person.

  • ACR/Canon D5 Colour Balance - nasty pinkish skin tones

    I use macbook pro, 2.33GHz/3GB 667MHz RAM with CS3 and ACR 4.3.1. I shoot Canon D5.
    When I shoot RAW, I get this strange pinkish look to the skin tones that I can't seem to correct. I've experimented with colour balance and hue, and the HSL and camera calibration tools, but not happy yet.
    Apologies if this is a basic issue, but would love some advice.
    Thanks.

    I think that is a standard catch-all message but it really is a poor show that a simple download page is so often unavailable.
    Just part of the new look Adobe. It really is a pity there's no serious competition yet, but if they keep going downhill at the present rate there will be!

  • Request better support skin tone evaluation/measurement

    Hello. I am writing this with the intention that it will be read by the folks at Adobe that are involved in the development of Lightroom. I'm pretty new to this forum, however, and I'm a little confused about whether this feature requests thread actually goes to the Adobe Lightroom team, considering that it is in a user-to-user forum. If there is a better avenue to get my feature request to Adobe, I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction.
    Before I get into my request, I also want to mention that I did my due diligence and searched this thread to make sure this has not been requested before.
    I am submitting this request because I do not see any useful way to measure or evaluate skin tone in Lightroom while adjusting white balance (or after adjusting white balance, for that matter). I can do a mouse-over to read RGB values, but I am not aware of any useful way to use RGB values for evaluating skin tones.
    I just watched the latest George Jardine video, in which he recommends to use a calibrated monitor and move the Develop controls back and forth until your eye tells you it's correctly adjusted. I enjoyed this video, and I have found that this generally works well for me for tone balance, but I believe an additional tool for measuring or evaluating skin tones would benefit the Lightroom workflow as I will explain below.
    I believe that many serious photographers, pro and amateur alike, routinely use the eyedropper in Photoshop for reading CMYK values to confirm the skin tones in their work. Even if they feel like they can usually eyeball pretty well, they find they get greater consistency when they use the eyedropper.
    Now I'm not saying that Lightroom necessarily needs CMYK support. Photoshop Elements, for example has a skin tone adjustment even though it doesn't have CMYK support. And I'm also not suggesting that Lightroom necessarily needs skin tone sliders like Photoshop Elements. I'm just suggesting that the Lightroom workflow would benefit from some kind of tool for evaluating skin tone while or after adjustments are being made in the Develop Module. I would like to leave it up to Lightroom to decide exactly how to implement this.
    The only way I currently see to do adjust while measuring skin tones is to open the file in Photoshop, make adjustments, and save. Even if there is a way to do this with ACR and have the adjustments saved in the sidecar or in the DNG, it still seems like a time-comsuming and unnecessary step for my workflow.
    Now this request is predicated on the assumption that evaluting skin tone is fundamental enough for a basic workflow that it should be included in Lightroom. In my opinion it is, and that is why I am making this feature request. I'm sure that some might not need it for their workflow, but it seems to me that this would be a valuable feature to a great many Lightroom users.
    Thanks for lending your ear, Adobe. I look forward to ALL your future versions of Lightroom, and I hope that skin tone evaluation/measurement is included in one of them.
    Regards,
    Mike

    Your post seems to assume that Lightroom is a tool for travel/landscape photography, and other types of photography (e.g., portrait/fashion) should be supported by a "specialized add-on module". I have to disagree with you on that point. Considering many of the examples on the Lightroom marketing are fashion shoots, I would think that they considers portrait/fashion photographers to be an important part of their target audience. They are not a fringe group of specialists.
    I'm sure that portrait/fashion photographers would feel the same way about a Lightroom capability that primarily benefits the workflow of a travel/landscape photographer, i.e., when I do do some landscape work, I just edit in Photoshop. But you wouldn't agree to that, would you?
    Skin tone measurement can be an incredibly easy tool to implement. It can be something as simple as showing the CMY values alongside the RGB values during a mouseover. Keep in mind, I'm talking about CMY not CMYK, so there should be no need to worry about what ICC profile to use. RGB to CMY is a straightforward transformation. It's embarassingly simple.
    There are other ways Adobe can implement skin tone management that would be more powerful but a little more complicated. Those would be great too.
    Anyway, thanks for the link to the Adobe feature request page! I will use it.
    Regards,
    Mike

  • Skin Tones Look Wrong When Printing From iPhoto

    Hi
    I'm having trouble getting the caucasian skin tones to look right on photos printed with my Epson Stylus C86 printer on Epson Premium Semigloss paper. They look too pinky/purple when compared with the screen of the Sony DSC camera I shot them with and also my iMac's monitor. They just look wrong as though the subjects have a combination of bad sunburn, high blood pressure and are blushing at the same time!
    I've tried the following tips synthesised from other threads:
    1. Downloaded the latest set of drivers from Epson's website.
    2. Ensured that they are associated with the printer in ColorSync utility.
    3. Selected the Use ColorSync option when printing from iPhoto's print dialogue box.
    These made no difference to the default behaviour i.e. same color problems.
    Could anyone guide me to a solution? I would rather not have to use another application to print them if possible. I'm not used to my Mac not "just working".
    Thanks

    What color profile do the pics have? Is the printer set to the same profile?
    Regards
    TD

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