And If your photo includes a lot of green trees or grass, you may need to make some adjustments to the green channel as well.
For instance, after decreasing the blue in the skin tones using the blue curve, you may also need to increase the warmth a bit using the red curve. You may need to adjust more than one curve. You will probably only need to make small adjustments, so don't overdo how much you drag downward (or upward). Move over to the skin tones in your image and click and drag DOWN to decrease the amount of blue in the skin tones. Click on the Targeted Adjustment Tool to activate it. Is your blue value too high? Open the blue curve. (Tip: If you don't see the option to change your channel, tap the square in the lower-right corner with a diagonal line through it). This panel seems less straight-forward to many but it is POWERFUL when it comes to skin tones!Ĭhange the "Channel" to whichever value you feel need to be adjusted. Quickly check your skin tone values one more time to determine which color value needs to increase or decrease. Adjust Skin Tones Using the Tone Curve Panel (Option 1) If you are moving the Shadows slider to the right, the shadow areas of your image will brighten. For example, if you are moving the Exposure slider to the right, the overall exposure of your image will brighten (increase). In general, moving any of these sliders to the right will cause whichever value you are adjusting to brighten or increase. You can also adjust the Temperature and Tint sliders, however, this will require you to visualize what colors in your white balance need adjusting.Īsk yourself: Should the image be warmer or cooler? Is the image too red or green? Then click over a medium-gray tone in your image - good options for this are the whites of the eyes or any element of your image that is gray (i.e. To adjust White Balance, click the White Balance Dropper in the upper-left of the Basic Panel. You may also want to adjust the Highlights and Shadow sliders as well since those can also impact the exposure of your image. If your image or skin tones need an exposure or white balance correction, it is important to do that before we start making changes to the color values of the skin tones.Ī really easy way to adjust the image exposure is to use the Exposure slider in Lightroom's Basic Panel. The lower the percentage values, the darker the skin tones are. Note: One question you might be asking is why the RGB values are higher in some images and lower in others? Answer: The higher the percentage values, the brighter the skin tones are. Now that you know the RGB values of your skin tones and what the optimum values are, you will know what color needs to be corrected on your particular image! The red % value should be the highest value and at least two percentage points over the green.The green % value should be higher than the blue value by at least one percentage point.The blue % value should be the lowest value.RGB Rule of Thumb for Beautiful Skin Tones: These RGB values will help you analyze your skin tones. RGB number values will appear in your histogram area on the right. To check the color balance of your skin tones in Lightroom, go to the Develop Module and hover your mouse over a medium tone area of your subject's skin. By checking the color balance you can see what the particular needs of the image are and then take steps to correct them. You can't fix something if you don't know what needs to be fixed. By following the steps below, you can have picture-perfect skin in every photo you shoot quickly and easily!
In Lightroom, perfect skin tones are quite achievable but definitely takes some know-how and practice. They are especially important when shooting weddings and portraits!
How to Get Beautiful Skin Tones in Lightroom (Every Time!)īeautiful skin tones are something we ALL want to achieve in our images.