When taking photos of people-themed works such as weddings and portraits, it is particularly important to accurately grasp the skin color of the people. Realistic and natural expression is not the only criterion. Sometimes we need to deliberately modify it to make the skin color of the subject appear beautiful and healthy.
Photoshop provides quite a wealth of adjustment functions, such as contrast, levels, saturation, curves, etc., but when using it, you will find that slight adjustments to the above tools may make the picture worse, because the color spectrum can be used for human skin color. Very limited. If you don’t want to spend too much time on skin color processing , it’s better to hire a helper for Photoshop. The small software SkinTune introduced here is a skin beauty expert.
SkinTune is a Photoshop extension plug-in with built-in skin color libraries from five regions including Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It has more than 45,000 colors that are close to real skin colors.
1. First install SkinTune, run Photoshop, and open the image that needs to be adjusted. In this example, we open the image as shown in the title picture.
2. Select the menu "Filter→PhotoTune→SkinTune" and run SkinTune (Figure 1). At this time, the original image is displayed in the left window, the right window is empty, and the "Color/Control" tool is unavailable.
Figure 1 Initial run of SkinTune
3. Move the mouse to the original image in the left window, and the mouse pointer changes to a "dropper" style. Click the left mouse button on a part of the image with a more natural skin color (avoiding highlights and shadows). A shortcut menu will pop up. (As shown in Figure 2). The menu lists five regional selections, namely Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Since the character is a Chinese beauty, we choose Asia in this example (you can adjust the "Zoom Tool" slider next to the right window to easily observe the original image).
Figure 2 Select skin color area
4. At this time, Skintune will automatically calculate the corrected color based on the area selection and display the results instantly in the window on the right. At the same time, the color parameter values (RGB, CMYK, SB) of the selected area will be displayed on the outside of the left and right windows to provide users with a reference (Figure 3).
Figure 3 Results of automatic optimization
5. Use the "Color/Control Tool" to fine-tune the image color (as shown in Figure 4). After the color selected in step 3 has been calculated and corrected, it will be displayed as a "target color" with a green border in the color sample. Use the mouse to select a different color. The color block can instantly change the current image effect. If you want to compare multiple effects, you can use the Snapshot tool to "take a picture" of the current effect image and have it displayed in the left window. Snapshot images and original images can be switched from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the window.
Figure 4 Rich color/control tools
6. When you are satisfied with the image effect, select "OK". The SkinTune program will close and exit to Photoshop. The user can save and exit or perform other processing.
SkinTune supports saving and loading operation history, and supports Photoshop's "action" command, allowing users to perform batch processing. At the same time, SkinTune also supports operations on image selections and layers to avoid affecting the color effect of the entire image.
SkinTune's skin tone processing function is quite delicate and practical. Fool-like automatic optimization, coupled with powerful color library support and precise parameter adjustment, can fully satisfy the choices of general users and professional users. When using it, the user does not necessarily apply the area selection rigidly according to the actual situation. Sometimes the seemingly wrong selection can produce unexpected effects (Figure 5).
Figure 5 Automatic optimization results of different area selections