Pinning Skin Tones - Advanced Work Flow

[ggroess]

This one is a bit new.

As I work on skin tones in CM one of the biggest hurdles is knowing what "Skin Pin" to set.  I have created a few resources for you to use and build upon. 

The first is a JPG image that I have posted before that has an extended range of skin tones for you to choose.
You will need the ID and Password to get to this image.

www.curvemeister.com/downloads/Class/greg/pinning_skin_tones/skin_tones.jpg

The next is a set of pins that I have posted in the Pins Area. Pins.txt needs to be copied to you pins folder.
The Jpg is available there too but in a smaller version.

http://www.curvemeister.com/forum/index.php?topic=1667.0

Lastly is the work flow...

www.curvemeister.com/downloads/Class/greg/pinning_skin_tones/pinning_skin_tones.pdf

A special thanks to Ganna for the wonderful example of needing skin tones corrected.

Your thoughts and questions will help me distill this down to a better work flow...so let please post reaction to this...
Greg

[imported_ganna]

Greg, this is amazing. Can I give you a pat on the back!  8) Thanks a lot; if this was the only new thing I learned from this class it was more than worth it. I presume you will also place a video clip?
Interesting that you did it in RGB
Ganna

[mikemeister_admin]

Wow, would never have thought to do that - very interesting - a big thank you Greg.

PS I'm off tomorrow for a few days but will re-join you early next week

[ggroess]

Greg, this is amazing. Can I give you a pat on the back!  8) Thanks a lot; if this was the only new thing I learned from this class it was more than worth it. I presume you will also place a video clip?
Interesting that you did it in RGB
Ganna

I can do it in LAB as well.. I did it in RGB so that I could use multiple skin pins one in the highlight and one in the shadow. 
LAB will only allow 1 active pin at a time.  I would have to take 2 passes at a LAB correction I think. 
If I am certain about the Pin I use LAB.  If I am shopping around for a good match I go RGB for the Skin tones part.

I wanted to get some of the guess work out of the process.  The Pin samples in CM are small and Mike is looking at ways to address this.  I find that if I choose the wrong tones to make the gradient it is very easy to see that I have a bad match and I can go back and choose different set of pins to use. 

I have experimented with using different highlight and shadow pins at the same time as well  For instance sometimes I use an Asian pin with a Caucasian pin.  It really depends on the tonality I am looking for.

Greg