Photoshop Match Skin Tone

[Victorio Galindo]

Coloursare best compared when they are side by side. You need to mask what you want to modify, copy temporarily parts of the target skin tone to the skin you would like to modify. It works probably best to use adjustment layers to modify the tones, or to repaint the tones (as you are in a comic-style).

It is true that skin tones are usually matched by the numbers when retouching, but in the case of composites with two completely different skin colors that can be close to impossible to do convincingly. I would suggest doing this job a different way.

You do need to ensure also the images are of high quality. In this case the stock image was fine, but I just sourced the new nose from Google images and those images are usually quite highly compressed JPEGS and you can see that here around the nasal septum.

You can see the two skin tones do not match. Make a small selection on the skin of the original model. It doesn't need to be very big just representative of the overall skin tone. Now select the layer with the new face and nose.

I won't explain how to use this utility in detail, but basically you select your original image as a source file and the background layer from the original image ie not the new face and nose. If you set the dialog as shown below you will get an overlay where Photoshop is attempting to match the selected skin tone to the tones in the new face with nose.

You now adjust the 'fade', 'color intensity' and 'Luminance' sliders to try and get as good a match to the original skin tones as you can. Obviously you are most concerned about the nose matching not the eyes, eyebrows etc.

The final stage involves a simple layer mask on the new nose layer to isolate just the nose. In this case the nose was stretched a little and moved downwards. In the case of this composite the models face is lit on the left and in a slight shadow on the right and so this needed to be reproduced with the new nose-that is done with curves to mimic highlights and shadows. That's how you do it. Looking at the new nose on the model makes me realise how careful you need to be with cosmetic surgery as the nose doesn't suit her face at all, but other people may think differently I guess In Photoshop you can always try again , unfortunately in real life you can't. You also need to match any grain in the original with the new nose.

It might be advisable to first switch to Lab Color and adjust the tonal scale and contrast (L channel) to more closely approximate the sample provided without shifting the color. Next, I would suggest a Smart Blur adjustment to more closely match the sample. Then tend to the a and b channels. This is the result with only Curves adjustment. More can be done locally. I would suggest that you place the total sample on a layer above the file you want to change and attempt to position it a closely as possible to the background layer image. Then use the Color Sampler tool and take readings of each layer. The advantage. since both layers read the same sampler point, is a measure from the same spot in each image.

So it goes without saying that there are a ton of different ways to match skin tones across your subject or between images in Photoshop so it's often just a matter of picking the option that is most convenient or intuitive. Despite the wide array of choices, I seldom see people use the selective color adjustment layer for this task. The beauty of selective color is that it allows us to go off the numbers rather than intuition and achieve an accurate result in little time.

In this video, we'll be using one of the images I shot while filming my Fashion and Beauty Photography/Retouching course and our aim will be to match up the lower part of the models body with the tones in her face. The result of our selective color adjustment can be seen below:

The key to the selective color adjustment layer is to analyze the distribution of CMYK colors at your source and match it at the destination as I demonstrate in the video above. It requires a bit of basic math and ratios, but don't worry, it's nothing too scary. If you've never used the selective color adjustment layer, I highly recommend exploring it a bit as it can be both a powerful correction and color grading tool that allows you to target any of the below by selecting the appropriate color.

For landscapes or environmental portraits, the other color options (Blue, Green, Cyan, etc.) can also be useful for targeting areas like sky, grass, etc. In the video we'll be focusing on either the red or yellow color since skin tones generally fall into those two colors or somewhere in between them. When I train people, they are often confused about which way to move the respective sliders so it's important to remember that if you subtract either Cyan, Magenta or Yellow, you're adding their opposite color. The easiest way to remember those opposite colors is to think RGB vs. CMYK. When we remove Cyan we add Red, if we remove Magenta we add Green and if we reduce Yellow we're increasing the amount of Blue. The Black slider can be thought of as the brightness of that color although I don't recommend making drastic changes there. Keep your adjustments within the -10 to +10 range on the black slider to avoid washing your colors out. If you want to adjust the overall brightness of a certain color, you can use a Black & White adjustment layer, change the blend mode to Luminosity and adjust each color slider accordingly.

Note that if you are trying to match colors from one image to the next, this will only work if the overal lighting is similar across them. You can't match colors properly if the lighting or exposure or even model's skin type are drastically different. I typically use this approach across multiple images when working on an editorial series where the lighting and model have stayed consistent.

For additional color matching techniques, you can use my SACA method/action described here, and also check out my photography/retouching course where I cover color correction and understanding light and color differences in depth.

great way to match skin, never though of that. what about photographing other skin tones, would it always be reds? (i'd assume not but curious as the most appropriate channels for different skin tones)

Thank you mate. Will probably save me a lot of time, since ive been doing it by matching light intensity first, then hue, then saturation of those troubled areas. There is another simple way of going about it, but does not produce that spectaculary close results, based on hue and saturation layer.

What i wanted to ask you guys, if you could show some similar way of keeping the colours consistent through the bulk of images. Is there an easy fix to move the adjustments from 1 image to another and just edit the mask?

Just a by the way: For anyone looking for a GREAT fashion photography tutorial that not only covers the photography and retouching side, but things like what agencies are looking for in test shots, the RGGedu one by Michael is by far the best I've seen and I've been subscribed to Kelby and have seen almost every one of Phlearns. It's super thorough.

What I see in your LAB values:

In the darker colors there is a A:B ratio of 1.5, this decreases with brighter colors to 1.25

This is a similar result to my colors. Could mean that with increasing L value the A:B ratio decreases.

Skin tones has always been a difficult topic to parse. For me, it is a very fascinating one as well because, although I am not very colour blind, I am very colour unaware. My guess is that most professionals have an intuitive sense of skin colour and manipulation.

Hey thanks, I will try your tips, getting rid of red first thing sounds good. Covid forced me into studio portraits and being obsessive compulsive about photography I have to master everything with impatience.

First of, i'd like to say that i'm partially colour blind which makes this task more difficult for me. I'm wondering if it is possible to change a person's skin tone in photoshop from something pretty common to look (in terms of color and contrast) like the image below:

I've noticed that a similar thing happens when you raise the blacks in curves and then lower some dark colours to create some contrast. It creates a beautiful effect in terms of contrast, but the colour is still off.

I tried to achieve the similar effects of the first image you provided.The left image is before any edits, and right image is after the edits. I hope this is the effects which you are trying to achieve!

Because we bumped contrast a bit I would probably then do some dodge and burn on the cheek, pores, forehead and nose. Maybe dial the entire look back by grouping the adjustments and lowering the opacity. I'd probably also mask the shirt and give it its own adjustment to bring it back to a more neutral white.

Lighting is very important. Ring flash (or just some flash near camera) was used for the first image, catching gleam in the skin more, while the second image has some softer more traditional (3-point lighting) setup.

Playing with tone curves (eg in raw developing software, or adding curves layers later in photoshop). Play around until the skin tones have that nice sheen to them, it's essentially an S-curve, which boosts contrast, with the flattening at the top around where the skin tones are in terms of brightness.

Create a gradient map that consists of the colors that you want in the skin tones, this would be from a very dark to a light brown for example. The gradient map adjustment layer will limit the image to only those brown tones you have specified.

Now that the whole image is in tones of brown, the next step is to mask out the parts of the image that you don't want affected. Use either a (raster) layer mask that you paint on, or a vector mask that you draw on with the pen tool. (you could use both in combination if you are experienced with that)

Natural light and even studio lighting can sometimes be uneven in group photos. There may be times when matching skin tones between two or more people in a photo makes sense, especially in family portraits. There are also differences in skin tones that can further widen the gap between exposures on each face.

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