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Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 3:41 pm
by ggroess
During this class I will be willing to do at least 1 interactive session using Skype for voice and a screen sharing program I have.  It is a simple process and usually works out quite well.

I am looking for feedback as to if you  would be interested, how willing people are to use Skype and, topics you are interested in seeing more information about.

Because we have people from all over the world we would need to schedule the session(s) pretty tightly and some coordination of connections to Skype for the conference call need to be arranged before we actually attempt this.

My current thoughts about this are:

1) Verify interest.
2) Ask people to download, install and configure Skype or another program capable of using the skype system to do the voice part of the session.
3) Schedule the session at least a week ahead of time for a Saturday. 
4) Sessions would be about 1 to 1.5 hours depending on interest and topics to cover.
5) Topics would need to be addressed before hand so we can focus on what you all want to see.

I am also thinking of offering single sessions to single users for specific trouble shooting and technique walk through as needed.
July 10th and 17th are possible dates

Also please list your time zone + / - GMT

I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this. 
Greg

Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 3:53 pm
by leeharper_admin
Greg,

I'd absolutely love to be part of this! It will be a fantastic learning opportunity for me, and it's very kind of you to offer to do this  :)

I will make it on either date, but my preference would be 10th July. My time zone is GMT.

I am going to have a think about the kind of topics that I would like us to discuss, and will continue posting to this thread as ideas come to me. My initial thoughts are that I would like us to discuss skin tones. I know that you would have a lot to say about this as you obviously put a lot of work into the Skin Tone pins that are available on the site. Specifically I'm interested in variation between and amongst ethnicities, and what to do when you don't have any normally lit areas of skin to work with.

I'd also like to learn more about choosing a GCR method, and I'd look forward to a deeper discussion of the benefits of curving in HSB.

I'm sure that I'll think of many more topics over the next few days  ;)

Looking forward to this!

Lee.

Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 4:14 pm
by ggroess
wonderful..I look forward to this as well..I always learn something from these sessions...

If you could provide an example of the skin tones in question I will have some time to get a better answer to you. 

I will also be posting an advanced skin tones work flow for you to look at this week. 
It combines a few different things to get your skin tones into a better place...

Greg

Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2010 6:34 pm
by leeharper_admin
Excellent!

I will try to find a good example tomorrow for you to have a look at  :)

Cheers,
Lee.

Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 11:18 am
by mikemeister_admin
Hi Greg,

I've found three examples of the kinds of skintone correction that I generally struggle with. I have added copyright/attribution information into the image metadata where appropriate.

The first was an image from Boston Globe's Big Picture website (www.boston.com/bigpicture). I'm not a photographer, so I usually work on other peoples' images, and sometimes - just for practice - I try my hand at some of the images that are published on The Big Picture. This first example is a case where the lighting is quite unusual. Sometimes at work I shoot the Costume department's summer show, which is usually held at a local theatre, under heavily gelled lights. It would be really good to know how to deal with skin tones that are being affected by strongly coloured lighting.

Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 11:26 am
by mikemeister_admin
The second example again is not one of my images - it was taken by the photography tutor here. I'd mentioned to him that I'd be happy to fix up any pictures that he was having trouble with, and he gave me this!

The model on the right-hand-side seems to be just about well enough lit to be able to use the skin tone pins, but the one on the left is more-or-less completely in shadow. Supposing that we were just looking at the model on the left, and the other girl wasn't in the shot, how should something like this be approached?

Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 11:33 am
by mikemeister_admin
This last image is one of mine from that fashion shoot that I told you about. I'm not sure how difficult something like this would be to correct. The designer of this collection had made these headpieces out of netting, which have the effect of desaturating the skin tone (and assuming that the netting is not completely neutral would also slightly change the hue of the skin).

I suppose that this kind of problem would be a big headache for wedding photographers (who could also run into the problem of non-neutral veils). I guess that the question I'm really asking with this image is if you can't correct the skin tone as if it was unobstructed, how far towards natural should you go?

Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 11:47 am
by leeharper_admin
The other skin tone related question that I have relates to diversity in skin tones. By this I'm referring both to the difference between Caucasian and Asian skin (as an example), and also to the various skin tones within a population (i.e., caucasian skin is not of one uniform tone - there are tans to consider amongst other things).

These questions make me wary of the Hue Clock recommendation of aiming for hues between 12 and 1pm. I'm sure that doing this is the right thing to do, but I wonder where exactly between 12 and 1 should I be aiming for given a particular ethnicity?

I've read CMYK recommendations in Dan's book, and his recipes do differentiate between ethnicity. The hue clock recommendation seems too general.

I love the idea of pinning skin tones, and inspired by your pin libraries I went online to various makeup companies and took screenshots of their foundation ranges. I've yet to pull anything together but I plan to build my own skin tone pin library. One of the things that struck me when visiting these sites was that many makeup companies offer their foundations in about 15 different skin tones (i.e., in more tones than there are distinct ethnicities - that I could name anyway). How to sort these out into groups is something that I'm sure will take a bit of time...

Cheers,
Lee.

Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 1:13 pm
by ggroess
Re: Fashion Shoot...

Lee this one is kind of subjective...The model obviously has makeup under the netting...so I would use the general rule of skin tones between 12 and 1. 

The netting can be made to be neutral as shown.  It actually improved the overall image when I did that.  This image is less of a struggle when you "settle" for some assumptions...

I was not there to see the gown so I settled for a more golden hue in the fabric.  I kept the skin reasonable...and I added some contrast in the netted area so that the face stood out more.

Apply my ACV to your posted image and take a look.

Greg

Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2010 1:17 pm
by leeharper_admin
That's a great adjustment - the gown looks exactly as I remember it, and the detail in the face makes the image more natural without removing the effect of the netting over the skin. Excellent  :) Thanks very much for the curve file, I'll have a look at that in a minute  ;D

Cheers,
Lee.