Please realise that I was saying the skin tone for a dark skin person and a light skin person is surprisingly similar in the ratio of RGB or YMC (analog film) and that was no racial slur intended in my comment. Also as with any color balancing tool it is only meant to get us within a close ballpark and fine tuning may still be necessary. I have used this tool with great success in Photoshop elements and have never seen a similar tool in any other program.
1 Like
Papers have been written on the closeness in hue between skins, despite a wide variety in lightness. From memory, I think the YCbCr colorspace is useful, ignoring the Y channel.
It may not be what you are looking for exactly but it might apply. Sometime s the skin color has a cast that reflects the lighting. Correct ing the skin correct s the image sometimes. I have used the color calibration and selected a skin patch as if doing a spot WB. Then switch this to custom if it doesn’t automatically go to that. This neutralizes the skin so now I just reduce the chroma to pull back on the effect until I get a nice skin tone and often this is a nice correction for the whole image
There is no catch all tool for skin tones. In terms of ratios, research papers have identified 4-5 strategies. To make it work, one would often have to apply at least 3 into their algorithm, with lots of conditionals. On top of that, it would have to have training on databases with real skin patches and established skin colour palettes such as from Pantone. Finally, segmentation and skin detection are recommended. In sum, it isn’t easy to do well in a way that would cover as many cases as possible.
2 Likes
Just looking at the patches of a color checker, skin patches have hues ranging between 44° and 69°. I doubt there is a way to quickly optimize something ± 14° without falling into the racial standardization trap again.
2 Likes