Datasheet

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c h a p t e r 1: DIGITAL IMAGING BASICS, WORKFLOW, AND CALIBRATION ■
Editing Camera Profiles for Better Skin Color
One common issue with digital capture is that any red component in the skin color
can be overemphasized, and people often complain that the skin color turns out
too red! If you find this to be the case with your files—even after you’ve built a
calibration—you can tweak the red out in the DNG Profile Editor.
First, you must arrange to shoot a test with a subject that exhibits the red skin
defect in your digital captures. Once you have tested and identified the ideal exposure,
open the DNG in the DNG Profile Editor application. Build the tables as usual, but
before you save the camera profile, zoom in on the subject’s face. (The same keyboard
shortcuts you use in Photoshop apply: Command+space or Ctrl+space. See Figure 1.38.)
Now, find an area on the face that has that overly pink look to it. As you scroll
over the image, look at how the color values (as displayed in the region above the color
patches to the right) change. Good skin color will have Lab values with the “a” and
“b” numbers equal or the “b” value slightly higher. In the example here, a=17 and
b=9. This area is too red! Click on the spot, and a dot will appear in the Color Wheel
where that color lives.
Figure 1.38 Zoom in and locate an area of red skin.
Now, take the Hue slider and move it to the right, toward yellow—the last
patch in the column of patches will show the before and after of the color you are now
editing (Figure 1.43). You may want to reduce the saturation of the color as well. The
beauty of editing the one problematic color in the Profile Editor is that it leaves more
saturated versions of that particular hue alone, so it won’t damage lip color as much
as it would if you were editing hues in Lightroom, ACR, or Photoshop.
When you are done editing, save the camera profile as before and give it a
descriptive name such as
Camera Name-Skin. The profile can be used as a special-
purpose profile for those situations where you might have trouble with overly red skin
color. There are times when even this specialized profile cannot automatically render
an ideal skin color, so it won’t eliminate post-process color editing altogether, but it
will help when you are working up a large volume of images for approval before doing
fine-tuning on final selects.
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