Curvemeister Forum

Greg,
I'm not sure I get this - but is this it? Put this skin pin on which changes things. Then turn it off to find three different points that should be grey. Then turn it back on and play with lightness and the ends of a and b channels.

I know I have made this better, but still think I could improve. Not sure what it is missing.

Julie

The reason you turn the pin off in LAB is that the color pins in LAB are handled like another neutral.  You want to place the pin to verify the correct choice of pins then turn that skin pin off for a short time so the curve can be set for the correct neutral.    Once the neutral is set then you can re-activate the color pin to make the skin tones look good.

That can also be said for the advanced work flow that I posted.  It is best to make major changes to the image first and then fine tune the skin tones with a pin.

The advantage is the reduction in the guessing of the correct skin tone, and the possibility of matching skin tones from Image to image with similar lighting. 
When we get to Masking the skin gets easier.  We can create a mask from skin tones and work from there to get them better.

Greg

Julie,you could use that combination of contrast and sharpening you did to the cookies and see if you can bring out the line of pimples on the ape's upper lip.In previous classes several people have managed this and it makes the ape even more human,good luck.GregM