[Oscar Alexander]

Ah... finally did something useful this weekend. I created a new set of skintone swatches, download them here. To install them, follow the instructions below:

• Open Photoshop
  
• Bring up the Swatches window
  
• Click the arrow-button and select "Load Swatches..."
  
• Select the Skintones.aco file and click Load
  
  
  

Oops... right-click the here link, and select: "Save target as..."

[This message has been edited by Oscar Alexander (edited February 01, 2000).]

[orOme]

nice tones, but....thats alot of colours to keep control of. heck. thats alot of colours even if youre doin pixel by pixel I dont think you'd even need 1/4 of that amount.

Cut it down abit

[Oscar Alexander]

Nooo... you cut it down. I didn't spend half an hour creating swatches to delete 3/4 of it

CTRL + CLICK a swatch to delete it...

[This message has been edited by Oscar Alexander (edited February 01, 2000).]

[dennison]

thanks a lot! nice choice of colors btw

[Mongoose]

Skintones have more pink in them. People's faces aren't brown

I do however appreciate your effort. :/

[Binke]

Ehm..Goose, so you say you have not seen anyone with brown skin?

[DuKEZ]

i dont have no pink in my skin.. i look more like the far right of the 3rd row from the bottom on that swatch

[Mongoose]

Argggh, you know what I meant!

The majority of skintones have pink in them.. whether it be cocasion, oriental, even Indian. Obviously, African Americans have a brown skintone, but that wasn't what I meant :P

Anyway, this is just my opinion, GET OFF MY BACK!*$(*$%*&%

Mongoose

[spooge demon]

Skin is really translucent and reflective. It doesn't have a true local color. I find that my biggest challenge in doing digital art is to get away from a shiny, metallic, processed look.

Here's a couple of skin ptgs. They are not the greatest paintings, but they have the variety of color and the warm and cool subtleness that make flesh seem more alive.

There is no such thing as brown. (No such thing as penguin crap mauve, either) It is really dark red. Learn to think of color and value as separate entities. Analyze color and value separately- even converting to grayscale to see if things check out.

naked girl

sweating in the soup

[Muzman]

hmm, terminology alert.
you mean 'value' as in "relative brightness"? And that should be independant of colour?
That's my guess.

(either way, I've always found it good to use green in skin tone now and then. just cause I stuff it up doesn't mean much; but the plastic look can be fun too :P)

[SightX]

HEHE...this is a bit old but I really wanted to comment on it. I find that if you add VERY subtle shades of blue to skin you will see very good things happen. It all has to do with reflective light and the such.

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- NSM - SightX

[Frost]

Skin is very complicated. You have to take into account the opacity of the skin -- skin varies in thickness, from knuckles to mid-forearm for example. (not that I'm an expert at this is in any way).

Anyway, I wouldn't be one to use swatches, ever, especially not generic skin tones and such, since it has no relevance to specific lighting for your scene, which should including drastic differences in color and value as Spooge mentioned, depending on how the skin is exposed and occluded from light (+directional/diffused/ambiant).

If you feel the need to use swatches, do some temporary ones for the pic you're working on... then again, I prefer color-picking using ALT-click and pressure-sense my way to what I want -- it just takes a fraction of a second and I (usually) get what I want.

Hmm, and I couldn't get to see Craig's naked girl pic... the link seems broken.

My 2.259873 cents.
frost.

[micke]

I think that skin does'nt always
look like how we THINK it looks like.
I mean i your'e doing a cartoon pic it could be ok, but if you're doing a realistic piece you'll notice that there's much more than the basic skin colours...Like green, purple blue, pink...skin is a little bit transparent and you have to bear in mind
that it's a lot going around under the skin that shines through like muscles, blood-wessles. I think it's impossible to create swatches for skin. You have to do that all manually i'm afraid.

-Micke

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-Mikael Noguchi-

http://www.katode.org/noguchi/

[This message has been edited by micke (edited March 23, 2000).]

[[Shizo]]

When i draw with airbrush (a real airbrush not a PS tool) with faces i start with purple and draw the beginning.. with mostly shadows only. Then add yellow, pink and thats about it (oh and brown too y0u can add)

but since its a REAL thing, in PS i dont think you'd like to start off with purple

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Russia is power. You dont agree --> we nuke you!

[Oscar Alexander]

Micke is absolutely right. Also, I wasn't trying to hand out the perfect set of skin tones, but just help you on your way. The amount of red/green/blue you add is up to you (quite some work if you're called Boris Vallejo).

Also, I found another trick for creating a cool palette (sorry, I just think choosing the right colors is really important):

• Open a new image (height: 25, width: 300).
  
• Select a neutral color (your_color) you want to use, i.e. a skintone.
  
• Draw a gradient from black-your_color-white.
  
• Now convert the image to 'indexed colors' (Image; Mode; Indexed color...) and select the amount of colors you want. The higher the number, the more tones you'll get. I usually set it to 10.
  

Hope this works for you...

[spooge demon]

Hehe, fixed that link for you, didn't think anyone was looking...