Hey guys! So today's video is going to make you save a ton of time when it comes to skin tones.
I want to show you one of the main tricks that I use when I want to try some new skin tones on my characters,
especially on characters that you already created the values or the colors.
Like in this case, this one is in color.
But what I mean by values is that if you do a black and white illustration like this,
the technique that I'm going to show you today will work as well.
Basically, what we're going to do--the first thing that you want to do in this trick is to make a selection of the skin.
So in this case, I got my arm here, I got the face, a little bit of the chest, and this arm.
So what you want to do is make a selection.
You can make a selection the way you want to. Usually, I use the pen tool, but any kind of lasso tool such as
the polygonal lasso tool work as well, as long as the end result looks like this.
So I have a selection of my skin tone. And once you get the selection like this,
what you want to do is go over your layers. And you want to go over your
adjustment layers, which is the circle, half black-half white at the bottom here.
You want to click on it. It's going to open a panel and you want to choose Gradient Maps.
Now, when the gradient map appears, it's going to give you a default gradient map.
And as you can see right now, it's going to give me a bizarre result.
But it's fine, we're going to change that result in a second.
What it did with the selection is that it created a mask.
And as you can see here,
the mask is basically just a black and white mask that will allow me to make an effect
with the gradient map, but not have an effect on the rest of my illustration.
So I'm going to close this here.
Basically, what I want to do with this here is create skin tones. And I want to paint skin tones from pictures.
So here what I have is three different skin tones.
I've got two portraits and a shoulder here. And I want to show you how easy and fast it's going to be for me to change my skin tones.
And I'm going to explain as well the process of doing it.
So the first thing you want to do once you're here is to double click on your gradient back.
I'm gonna double-click, and open this Properties panel. And then you want to double click on the actual gradient.
And from here, I can close this.
Once the gradient editor--which is this window--appears,
if you never did anything with this, you'll have the default gradient that Photoshop gives you.
The first two being created by the selected colors that you have, so right now I have a green and a white.
If I had different colors, those first two would be different.
Then you got a black and white, which is the one I'm going to click on right now.
Again it's going to change my skin tone back to a gradient map.
If I click on any of them, it's going to change it to this. It's going to give some funky results sometimes.
The idea here is to be able to modify them. So I'm going to click on the black and white,
and I'm gonna explain a little bit more about the gradient editor here.
So first of all, you've got presets of gradients here, and you've got names for each of them.
And basically what we're going to use today is the gradient that you see here.
What's important to know is the two arrows at the bottom.
They change the colors.
So right now if I move this, you'll see that it's going to make changes on my skin tone here.
And basically what I'm going to do is change those arrows from those skin tones to create new skin tones.
So the first thing I'm going to do is click on the black here, and I'm going to try with the first one here,
and what you want to do is take the darkest skin tone that this photo has here.
So I'm clicking here on the fold of the eyelid which is a really dark place.
Then you want to click in the middle, and then add a new arrow.
We want to change that arrow to something that is mid value.
So I'm going to double click on the color here so I can see. Mid value would be like in the middle here.
And I'm going to click around here and try to find something that is closer to mid value.
And I think that is closer to mid value, so I'm gonna click OK.
The white I'm going to click on it, and I'm going to take the highest value that I see, which is probably the highlight on her nose right here.
So from here, I created a new skin tone variation with the gradient map.
What I'm going to do is add just a little bit more colors to it.
So I'm gonna pick something in the middle of this and the mid-tone.
I'm gonna click here, add a new arrow, and I'm going to try to add something that is dark enough to fit in the middle.
Like this. And I'll do the same here.
Something like that. So it's going to give me just a little bit more to play with.
From here, what's important is to play with the arrows to actually adjust the skin tone.
Obviously, right now it seems a little bit bizarre.
So what I'm going to do is just move the arrows that I've created to try to get a skin tone that looks natural.
So I'm just going to move them a little bit, and I'm going to try to get the same kind of effect that I see here.
By moving all of those, it should get closer and closer.
I think that's pretty close--just move this here a bit more.
So I think this is pretty close here...
Now obviously, what you're seeing right now is not exactly ideal because it doesn't take into account the reflection of my green walls everywhere.
So if I want to add that reflection of the green walls, I would add some green to that new skin tone that I created.
So I'm just gonna double click again here on my gradient map, and what I'll do is add a little bit more green to my tones.
I'm going to click on this mid value here. I'm going to click on the color,
going to open the color picker. And what I'm going to do is add a little bit of
cyan and yellow, which is blue and yellow basically. And it's going to add a
bit more green to this color. So what I can do is just click on the box and use my
key arrow and just press up a little bit, it's going to add a little bit of blue.
And I'm going to do the same thing with the yellow. And it's going to give just a
little bit more greenish to that color.
If you want to see the difference here, I'm going to do a command Z, and you
can see it just added a bit of the green tones.
So now, the skin tone is also taking the relation with the background
which is more fit to my illustration here.
And just like that, I've been able to create a new skin tone. Now if I want to keep it. I could
actually keep it by making a new preset here.
I would just have to give it a name and say, "skin tone green-1".
And press New.
And it's going to add it to here.
Now, if you want to keep those presets and save them, you can also save them on your computer by pressing save.
I won't do this for now, but it's an option that you could do as well.
So as you can see that has been really fast,
and just like that, have been able to change my skin tone.
So I'll do it another time just to give you another example. So what I'm going to do is double click on my gradient map,
And I'm going to go back to the gray scale.
And this time i'm going to try with this one. So I'm going to click on the black again,
take the darkest tone that I can see, just around here.
I'll click in the middle, and find something that is midtone-ish.
Click on the highlights, and I'll try to find again tones that fit in the middle of those two.
Sometimes it's going to be hard for you to find the midtones, in which case what you can do is
just double click on the color and just pick it up manually, just like this.
Find something in the middle of them, I think it should be a little bit darker actually.
And we'll just pick up the tone.
As you can see this one is drastically different. And it's because the values do not
play the same way. There's more highlights on this space than there is over there.
But I can fix that by just moving the arrows again.
So I'm just going to move the arrows, and I will gain back this highlight.
That's something a little bit closer. Once again, if I wanted to add a little
bit of green, I would simply have to click on one of the colors, and just add
a little bit of cyan,
and a little bit of yellow, and it would give me just that greenish glow a little bit,
to make sure that this skin tone fits in the picture.
So I'm going to click again on New--I'll just give it "skin tone-2",
And click New.
And once it's added there, I'm going to click OK. Now it goes with every kind of skin tone.
Obviously, if I want to try to turn the one here,
my character here is too white to actually get that skin tone.
What I can do actually to modify this skin tone into make it match this, is to change the value that I have.
So right now my values are something like this.
And I need something that's darker. So what i can do is just click on the
adjustment layer once again, and just click on the letter the Levels.
This panel is going to appear, and what you can do is simply take the white arrow,
the bottom right arrow, and bring it down like this to get the values a little bit more dark,
And you want to play as well with those arrows here just to bring everything closer.
And we'll also put a mask on it so it's going to affect only my skin tone.
And as you can see now I'm affecting just the skin tone,
and I'm able to just play with the values of my skin tone, to something
that's closer to a darker skin. And if I put back to my colors as you can see
that I just need to modify my green.
So what I'll do is I'm going to put the gradient map on top of this, and once
again I'm going to open my green map here, and put the black and white.
And I'm going to do the same operation now. I'll take the darkest skin tone and I can see.
in the middle one, I think that's orange-y, and then I'll set something in
the middle too--something here, and something there.
Now, if I want to modify this and get closer, I'll have begin to move the arrows.
So what I can do is just move the arrows, because what i want to create as well is
that highlight that is on the skin. So I'm just going to move everything to the left.
And it's going to bring back that highlight. And just like that, I created a really dark skin.
Now obviously, this skin tone doesn't work with this character here.
But you can see that any skin tone can be modified by just a few clicks.
If you need something darker, you just change the levels.
If you see if I take out the levels it's going to burn my skin completely.
But with the levels now, it looks ok. But yeah, I'll go back to a skin tone
I guess that fits better my character, and the one that I saved here. The first one
here I think was the best here.
And that's it guys!
That's how you can change your skin tone in a matter of minutes!
So have fun, give it a try! Happy Painting!