Calibrating ACR for skin tones / portraits

[switters]

I recently bought a Canon 5D. I love it for the most part, but I'm having trouble getting pleasing skin tones in tungsten/mixed light. Obviously WB has a lot to do with that, but even after correcting for that the numbers are still off. When I say numbers, I'm referring to the CMYK guidelines (yellow should be a few points higher than magenta, cyan should be 1/4 - 1/2 the value of magenta).

I am consistently getting too much cyan, and occasionally too much yellow. I'd like to find a way to change the color calibration sliders in ACR to shift this, so I have a good starting place to work from. I have calibrated my 5D to ACR using a Gretag MacBeth ColorChecker and a script from Rags Gardner, and I've also used the process Lee Varis describes in his book to calibrate for skin. Nevertheless, I'm still not quite satisfied with the skin tones.

I know how to correct it in Photoshop, but I don't want to open every single image in Photoshop to do this. I think it's probably possible with the right settings to do it in ACR.

Here are a few recent images:

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[Jonathan Wienke]

Google for Tom Fors' ACR calibration script. It's free, works great, all you need is a Color Checker.

Also, be aware that mixed lighting often means that no single white balance setting will work well for the entire image, and in many cases it is necessary to blend two or more different conversions of the same RAW with different WB settings.

[dennysb]

The ACR calibration is a great tool indeed, but I find it useful (mostly) if you have a control environment with repeatable lighting settings, such as a Studio. If you calibrate for a specific lighting setting and then take pictures on a different light environment, the original calibration becomes less relevant, IMHO.

Take Care

Google for Tom Fors' ACR calibration script. It's free, works great, all you need is a Color Checker.

Also, be aware that mixed lighting often means that no single white balance setting will work well for the entire image, and in many cases it is necessary to blend two or more different conversions of the same RAW with different WB settings.
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[switters]

The ACR calibration is a great tool indeed, but I find it useful (mostly) if you have a control environment with repeatable lighting settings, such as a Studio. If you calibrate for a specific lighting setting and then take pictures on a different light environment, the original calibration becomes less relevant, IMHO.

Take Care
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I ended up doing a calibration using Rags Gardner's scripts, but I chose to calibrate the red to the skintone patch (an option in the script).  This is producing very good results - for portraits.  With other subjects, I use the default calibration for R,G,B.  

Best,
Chris

[John77]

About calibration, a third script gave me the best results, it is called ACR Calibrator L. It based on both Fors and Rags scripts.

Here are an exhaustive evaluation of the three scripts (found on the web):
http://www.photoactivity.com/Pagine/Artico...l%20sole_en.asp

ACR Calibrator L: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tindeman/raw/acr-calibrator-l.html

[lumpidu]

Hi,

I also used ACR Calibrator L, and I am very pleased with the results. Not only look skin tones much more natural, but also e.g. clothes and flowers.

I didn't know before that my Nikon D200 lacks so much the reds, although I always boosted them instinctively.

Here are the values that the script spat out for my Nikon D200 in case somebody with a D200 wants to give it a try:

max. deltaE2000: 2.39

Hue:
Reds: -13
Greens: -16
Blues: -4

Saturation:
Reds: +40
Greens: -11
Blues: -1

It would be interesting to hear from other D200 users, which values they are getting.