The Academy Color Encoding System provides the widest compatibility for color-managed workflows. But what does that mean?Ī color-managed workflow (such as ACES) is one that accounts for the color space of your source material, and technically transforms it into the color space of your display. The best single thing you can do for your skin tones is to use a color-managed workflow. Now that we understand what skin tone is, and what makes it look lifelike and pleasing, let’s dive into our strategies for consistently nailing it. Attempting to preserve a neutral skin tone in these scenarios leads to brittle, unnatural images. Of course, this look is often used stylistically, so if you’re lighting or grading in this way, skin tones will fall outside the normal range. This is especially true of paler complexions, as they reflect back more of the light they’re being illuminated with. This means that in scenes lit or graded with a strong “wash”, skin will reflect more of the “wash” color, and may fall partially or fully outside its normal range of hues and saturations. That means the level of illumination on skin radically impacts the visual presence of different hues, and our perception of them. One important caveat here: Skin, like any other material, reflects the light it’s illuminated by. And if they become too desaturated or drift toward yellow, subjects may appear pale, sick, or malnourished. So what happens if the skin tones drift to either side of this range? If hues become too saturated or drift toward red, subjects can begin to look blotchy, almost intoxicated or over-exerted. We can chart these hues and saturations using a vectorscope, and they fall around what is called the “skin tone line.” The more our subject’s skin falls outside this band of hues and saturations, the less pleasing it will appear to the average viewer. A vectorscope view of multiple skin patches metering in the healthy range of hue and saturation.Īssuming we want to make our talent look healthy (which isn’t always the case!), we can define “good” skin tone as hues and saturations that correspond to our memory color for healthy skin. Regardless of ethnicity, pigmentation, or complexion, healthy skin occupies a remarkably narrow range of hues and saturations. Thankfully, our brains respond very precisely to this range, so finding the boundaries is almost diagnostic. It turns out this is simpler and less subjective than you’d think. Now that we have a baseline definition for skin tone in general, let’s go further and quantify what exactly makes it “good” or “bad?” So for the purposes of our discussion, I’m going to define skin tone as the reproduced range of hues and saturations in our subject’s skin. Terms like tone mapping, tonal ranges, and split-toning all refer to the grayscale curve of our image, rather than color properties like hue or saturation.īut when we talk about skin tone, hue and saturation are actually the two biggest factors, with contrast and brightness coming in at a distant third. In virtually any other context in color grading, “tone” refers to the contrast or brightness component of our image. One of the reasons skin tone is so misunderstood is that the term itself is a bit of a misnomer. Checking skin tone inside DaVinci Resolve:īefore we dive in, we need to clarify some definitions.In today’s article, we’ll look at five strategies for achieving pleasing and lifelike skin tones. We may recognize what healthy skin tones look like, but figuring out how to get it is something else entirely. That said, great-looking skin tone is an elusive, mercurial ideal, especially when we step into the world of digital video workflows. Poor quality skin tones can communicate something about our characters and stories that we don’t intend. So it’s our right (even duty) to be so preoccupied with skin tone. We may not know the precise color a particular house, or garment of clothing, or landscape should be, but we know exactly what healthy skin looks like. Humans are fine tuned to the details of other humans, and we pick up on even minor visual variations from what our brain tells us it should look like. ![]() ![]() Why? Because our eyes are highly adapted to evaluating skin tone. Faces and skin are present in the majority of images we shoot, and they’re generally the most important feature that draws the viewer’s eye. We painstakingly organize lenses, cameras, lighting, and color grading tools strictly by this single factor - and for good reason. Skin tone might be the most discussed and sought-after creative aspect of motion images among filmmakers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |