Sweet Kiss

[Shadow]

Hey Gang, here's another from that "color-challenged" bunch  ;D

Original. Used the difference method to get the first black pixels on the dress for the gray point and checked it with Margie's way of looking at the 50% gray layer and making sure that was black. Switched my dropper to point sample but still not sure that is actually gray. Any thoughts?


Added Curves, Clicked Auto and then tweaked each channel. Left the midpoint high because bringing it down to 126 seemed way too dark. Added a second Curves layer to reduce the yellow cast on the skin but still way off.



Added Hue/Sat and reduced yellow to see how it looked. (This was after going down Lynn's rabbit hole with the different ways of correcting skin color.  :crazy: ) Sure would appreciate your recommendations. It looks off. Color me blue  ;D

[Shadow]

Decided to scrap everything and try old school. Duped Bkgd layer. Added Blur/Average. Inverted. Then added Curves, Hue/Sat for yellow staining across kids and then a final curves to tweak skin tones. Merged all and corrected edge damage. How's this looking? (Have to correct upper right corner still.)

[Mhayes]

Shadow, I always believe in keeping it simple if I can. Believe it or not, I only used finding the neutral gray when all else fails. I also very seldom in Curves use the eye dropper for the white or black. Instead I'm usually lazy and prefer to go to Curves Adjustment and hit the Auto button. It may not be my final step, but after duplicating the background--it is my first. What you have done is to try an manipulate the original without doing either a Levels or Curves Adjustment, and or finding neutral gray. I usually do just the one as I don't think throwing everything you have at it, if it looks promising with the first correction. You did all that on the first few tries and then on the last you tried tweaking the color and it doesn't look bad, although boy looks a little red. I'm not sure what "Auto/tweak meant--Curves, Levels, etc.?





At the last I did use "Vibrance" but am careful because if you get heavy handed it becomes too much. Mine probably use some more tweaking too to correct some of the green cast.  ;)


Margie

[Mhayes]

And now to muddy the water, here's another version.



Not sure wild about this one.

Something we have touched on at different times, and maybe better to do it on a separate post--Color Correction in Curves and setting the numbers for shadow, highlight, and mid-tone preferences. I noticed that even though I had set them before, they have since changed.

[Shadow]

Good morning. Thanks for your input Margie. Aw photoshop  :D  There is a gremlin living in PS. The Auto/tweak was an Auto Curves and then I tweaked each channel a bit. Didn't realize the icon had gone away showing it was a curves layer. It does that from time to time. (Like changing your dropper settings) Found Neutral Gray with Difference method and then tweaked that point with Margie's tip (turn off Threshold and verify black point on Difference layer). Added Curves/Clicked Auto. Hue/Sat to reduce yellow. Second Curves layer to tweak skin. Merged all for healing and then added Dodge/Burn layer to reduce glare from glasses just a bit.
Any thoughts?

[Mhayes]

Bingo! Very nice Shadow!  :up:  :up:

Margie

[Shadow]

 :hug:  Thank you Margie. Stay warm!

[Lynnya]

Nice job on the color correction girl  :up: :up:

[Shadow]

Thanks Lynn! OPR = Always Learning ... ain't it grand! Have a good one.