How to Create Pleasing Skin Tones Out of Any Camera's Footage

If you still struggle with the skin colors of your images or your videos, there is a way to cope with that. Most importantly, it works with footage from any camera.

In the video above, you will see some solid tips on making skin color look pleasing regardless of the person's skin color. Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter dives into the details of using the vectorscope tool. This is a color management tool that can be found in almost any professional video editing software, as well as in several photo applications (such as Affinity Photo). I can't praise that tool enough, because it changed the way my videos were color-graded once I found about it. It not only works on any skin color, but even if your monitor is not calibrated. Yes, it is important to calibrate your monitor, but the vectorscope gives you an on-screen indicator that doesn't depend on the color shift of your display. You can have great skin (100% guaranteed only for video, sorry) even if your monitor is black and white. Pike shows how he color corrects his footage using Final Cut Pro, but you can easily find a way to apply that knowledge in other professional video software you may be using.

Tihomir Lazarov's picture

Tihomir Lazarov is a commercial portrait photographer and filmmaker based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is the best photographer and filmmaker in his house, and thinks the best tool of a visual artist is not in their gear bag but between their ears.

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1 Comment

The concept of that everyone's skin tone is or should be the same nearly resulted in the first angry rant of the day. That is what people most people, at least in the west, want
(many Asian woman prefer 256, 256, 256) so that is what we should give them I guess. I agree with making the hue uniform though.