Paris 1

[kimh]

Hi all,

Could you take a look at this photo and give me some feedback please.
I'm not sure about the skin tones.

Thanks,
Kim

Original


WIP 1

[Hannie]

Hi Kim, great job so far!

I always do a levels and Curves adjustment before repairs, I think that when you adjust Levels/Curves the skin tones will also improve some.
If the skin tones are still too yellow you can add a Color Balance layer. move the blue slider some to the right, hide all mask and in the layer mask paint over the faces with the white brush.

One more thing, if you could bring back some of the shading on the little girl's pants left side (our left)

[Mhayes]

Kim, I agree with Hannie about doing a Levels/and or Curves adjustment before repairs.

[kimh]

Ok, thanks
WIP 2

[Hannie]

Looks great Kim!

[kimh]

I always do a levels and Curves adjustment before repairs,

I was wondering about that, I did read somewhere on here to do the adjustments first but I wasn't sure if that was just for photoshop.
One of the Affinity tutorials that I did said that if you do that you have to turn off the adjustment layers while doing the retouching otherwise the changes take on the adjustments and if you change the levels later they don't match.
I don't know if the same happens with photoshop or if its just an Affinity thing.

I guess this is one of those discussions that's probably been done over and over already but being a newbie I've missed it all   :-)

[Jo Ann Snover]

I always do a levels and Curves adjustment before repairs,

... if you do that you have to turn off the adjustment layers while doing the retouching otherwise the changes take on the adjustments and if you change the levels later they don't match.
I don't know if the same happens with photoshop or if its just an Affinity thing.

In Photoshop, you don't have to turn off the adjustment layers but you do need to set your clone or healing brushes to "Current & Below" and place all your adjustment layers above all your pixel layers. That way there is no interaction between the two. If you paint with the paintbrush, you do have to turn off all the adjustment layers before sampling colors, so I have layer comps for "All layers" and "All pixel layers" so that I can easily switch.

I have Affinity but I don't use it much, so I'm not sure if Layer Comps are part of their feature set.

For me, the Current & Below change, which I think was in CS5 (but it's hard to remember), was one of the most transformational changes in Photoshop and really enabled non-destructive editing.

[kimh]

Thanks Jo Ann, it sounds like Affinity works the same way as Photoshop although the layer comps are called groups.
Current Layer & Below is the same.

The way I work is I have the original image at the bottom which is locked to prevent changes, then I have a Retouching layer which is where most of the corrections go, then if any small areas need masking & corrections those next and then the levels/colour adjustments at the top.
Maybe the tutorial I saw was putting the adjustment layers straight above the original image which is why they were turning them off.

So it seems like I have the basic arrangement correct, I've just been working from bottom to top and doing the levels last so I'll try those first and add some layer groups.

I'm curious now, with your process what was the problem you encountered when doing the adjustments last.

Thanks
Kim

[Jo Ann Snover]

I don't have problems with when color adjustments are done (given a workflow where the pixel edits and color/tone adjustments are separate).

If people follow other workflows, it's important to avoid making color changes after they've made edits, which is why many here follow the "color adjustments first" approach. You just have to be clear about the dos & don'ts of whichever approach you've chosen.