Skintone adjustments separately from the look

[Alexander Volkov]

Quote

 

Hi, everyone!

How many of you are keying and adjusting skin separately from the background (look), in parallels or layer nodes, when creating a look? Do you key and control skin separately from the background every time you creating a look?

What is your approach to adjusting  skintone color to match the color of the environment, the color of the look?

 How you adjust your skintones  when you create for example a cold look, or a  warm look?

Do you  push colours  separately into  particular tonal range of the skin like shadows, mids, and highs with log wheels,  or do you make just a broader adjustments with primaries wheels?   

Thank you,

Alex

Edited April 25, 2020 by Alexander Volkov

[Tom Evans]

You should try to get your skin tones right in your balance pass. Try to balance for the skin tones and you probably find that the environment falls into place. If you still need to tweek you can use hue shifts, or go to keys. When going extreme you can pipe the colors back from the source through a parallel node.

[Alexander Volkov]

Thank you, Tom!

After balancing shots for skin , after matching shots in the scene, on stage where you create a look for the scene , when you want to create some strong look  , for example warm yellow saturated look or cold blue desaturated look,  when you push for example blue into the shot , the skin will be too blue, or when you push yellow-orange into the shot the skin will be too warm, so to bring back natural skin color I use parallel node  or use  layer node with 50-60% opacity.

 But what can be made, to maybe  further and better blend the skin with the look, so maybe when creating a cold blue look, add a touch of coolness into the skin with highlights log wheel,  or when creating a hot warm yellow look, add a touch of warmth into the highlights of the skin?  What is your approach to skin , when you need get a not normal neutral look,  but need look with some strong color cast?

[Tom Evans]

In my opinion, the best way to blend back some of the source color is to pipe it back into the new look you have created with a parallel node just the way it's done in the professional color grading series here on Lowepost. In a cold blue look the skin should be cold, it just needs some of its natural skin tone to blend through the coolness and that's best done by mixing it back in. You could always finesse the skin by adding whatever secondary you want, but in 99% of the cases you don't need too.

[Tom Evans]

Take Game of Thrones as an example, I talked to Joe and he does the same thing.  You don't have time for special treatment of the skin tones on every actor when you have a time schedule so you need to make the base sit nicely and pipe in whatever is missing to create the color balance you want the fastest way you can. By using this simple technique you also not need to worry about bad spill from keys and other artefacts. 

[Alexander Volkov]

Thank you.  Yes I saw this great color grading series here on Lowepost. But how you can pipe in, just the skin color in parallels without using key?  By using  hue vs sat curve in parallel node, and  gain red color and that will reveal just  the skin color ?

Edited April 26, 2020 by Alexander Volkov

[Tom Evans]

Yeah, increasing the strength of the source color will force it through. 

[Alexander Volkov]

So by using Hue vs Sat curve in parallel and gaining saturation of just the skin color.

Thank you Tom!

[Tom Evans]

Or use the wheels or any of the other tools to increase the colors.

[Anton Meleshkevich]

Usually color separation is made on set by location design or  by cold lighting for a background and warm lighting for an actor. Then it's just slightly increased by print film LUTs or a color matrix (RGB mixer for example), and RGB toning curves at master level before the LUT or individually for each shot (CDL or shadows/highlights or whatever).

Trying to separate skin from a beige wall usually isn't a good idea.

[Alexander Volkov]

Anton thank you for your answer!  

But when scene take place outdoors, without set and location  design, cold overcast day, and you need to make image very cold blue , so you push blue into the image  and the skin gets also blue, too blue, or opposite when you shoot outdoors on sunny day, and you want further enhance this warmth by making a warm yellow hot sunny look, you push yellow orange into image, and skin gets too warm. So you need just control on skin to pull some coldness or warmth back.  Im  not talking about separating skin from the wall  (background), but asking how you deal with strong color casts looks (very green look, or very blue, or very yellow look), but also to leave (protect)skin natural in that particular environment, cold blue environment or warm yellow environment, without being skin too blue or too orangy-yellow? But also not too overprotect it, so it looks natural in cold blue environment or in warm yellow environment for example.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Alexander Volkov

[Yoav Raz]

11 hours ago, Alexander Volkov said:

But when scene take place outdoors, without set and location  design, cold overcast day, and you need to make image very cold blue , so you push blue into the image  and the skin gets also blue, too blue, or opposite when you shoot outdoors on sunny day, and you want further enhance this warmth by making a warm yellow hot sunny look, you push yellow orange into image, and skin gets too warm. So you need just control on skin to pull some coldness or warmth back.  Im  not talking about separating skin from the wall  (background), but asking how you deal with strong color casts looks (very green look, or very blue, or very yellow look), but also to leave (protect)skin natural in that particular environment, cold blue environment or warm yellow environment, without being skin too blue or too orangy-yellow? But also not too overprotect it, so it looks natural in cold blue environment or in warm yellow environment for example.

Edited 11 hours ago by Alexander Volkov

Hi There Alexander

I think you try to get something that is impossible or at list can look strange.

Usually when a skin is in this conditions as yours. cold blue or worm yellow it also effect the skin.

Meaning that the skin won't stay natural anymore  and it must have the effect of the look.

the same goes for bright light and dark. skin is effected from those and can't stay natural.

and for the technical side there is no "goto tool" for this or that.

you should try all the tools in order to achive what you want. the best way is to try until you get there.

its like when using a key. you play with the luma and the sat and the hue until you get to a nice key. if you can't then you add a mask.

or go and try other tools like hue v sat or whatever.

hope it helps

cheers Yoav 

[Alexander Volkov]

Yoav, thank you !  Sorry for my bad English, I meant skin to be not much very blue, but ofcourse  it should be colder than normal balanced skin.

So im not talking about of saving 100% of natural color of balanced skin, but about nice blending of balanced skintone with the strong blue cyan look, or with strong warm yellow- orange look. So the skin appears not very much blue (in case of the blue cyan look)or not very much yellow warm (in case of warm hot yellow look).

Edited April 27, 2020 by Alexander Volkov

[Yoav Raz]

Hi Alexander

so I think all of the above tricks and tips 

should work.  
 

My trick in situation like this is using the same shot but color for skin only. Like get the best skin I can so I could key it later with parallel or in mistika we have

recovery mode. 

[Anton Meleshkevich]

16 hours ago, Alexander Volkov said:

But when scene take place outdoors, without set and location  design, cold overcast day

Same thing.
Toning curves + print film LUT.
I never select skintone using qualifier in Resolve for that kind of purpose.
I either use resolve or light illusion or my own LUTs, or just create a LUT for the project in 3D LUT Creator. Usually it's just a "make blue to be more cyan, make yellow to be more orange, make these saturated colors darker" and so on. Rarely I use skin selection in 3D LUT Creator. Usually it's just a AB-grid instead or a color matrix.

And then, if I need to get a cold day, I just set WB or color balance of the clip cooler. Before the LUT of course.
This skin separation, you're talking about, goes from a more simple color palette you get by using a look LUT.

If you really want to get more saturated skin, while keeping background cold, make the whole image cooler, then just increase saturation. As a bonus (or as an unpleasant effect) you'll get two things: more color variations in the skintone and more saturated cold colors.
Separation goes from pushing colors away from each other using new (cold) white point, you've set by making the shot cooler, as a pivot. But you also get more color variations. This can be fixed by hue-vs-hue, rgb-mixer, whatever. Hardest thing here is to not make it look weird. Even subtle changes can ruin everything. So you have to be careful.

What you see in hollywood movies is a good lighting, precise work with contrast using lights. Reflectors, negative fills. When it is a good shot, you can just add some blue to the shadows, shift blue to teal a little bit using hue curves and hit render.
That's not the answer you want to get at post production forum, but shit in - shit out unfortunately.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Anton Meleshkevich

[Alexander Volkov]

Anton, thank you very much, for your in detail explanation. I'm working as a cameraman ,  but  I'm  also interested in color grading. :)