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Archive 2014 · Headshots

Inga
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Headshots

Hi all, fairly new to headshots still, but getting a lot more business. Here is a recent shot of a local actor I took using mainly natural light. The rim light is a speedlight about 6ft behind and low power with a 1/4CTO on it.

I'm currently having some issues with colour however. Not sure if this should go in the Post Processing forum... On my Dell U2711 (which is regularly calibrated with a Lacie Eye One puck and Gregteg Macbeth software) the shots look nice and neutral. However on my laptop which is not calibrated, and on my iPad and iPhone they look very red/magenta heavy. Could some of you folks with calibrated screens let me know what you see? Cheers.

Jan 28, 2014 at 02:55 AM

FranchiseJuan
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Headshots

While the shots look nice, on my calibrated monitor, as well as my calibrated Surface pro, they look quite warm (not very neutral).

Jan 28, 2014 at 03:40 AM

Inga
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Headshots

FranchiseJuan wrote:
While the shots look nice, on my calibrated monitor, as well as my calibrated Surface pro, they look quite warm (not very neutral).

Sorry, my comment was probably misleading...given that the shots have a 1/4CTO as a rim light, I have WB'd them on the warm side temp wise. But it's more the tint that seems to vary between my displays here at home. The other displays all show a magenta colour cast that is not present on this monitor.

Since posting this I installed and ran the Lacie Blue Eye Pro software and used settings of 6500K 2.2 Gamma and 120cd/m2. The monitor calibrated to less than 1% variation from those values. Also the Delta E score was average 0.4 with a max of 0.9...fairly high scores from what I know.

Jan 28, 2014 at 04:41 AM

Ian Boys
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Headshots

Just a small point - in the UK actor headshots are portrait format but in the USA they are generally landscape. I don't know what the convention is in Australia but given that these days they are generally viewed online wouldn't landscape be better?

Jan 28, 2014 at 07:06 AM

Ian Boys
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Headshots

And yes, magenta.

Jan 28, 2014 at 07:06 AM

Inga
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Headshots

Ian Boys wrote:
Just a small point - in the UK actor headshots are portrait format but in the USA they are generally landscape. I don't know what the convention is in Australia but given that these days they are generally viewed online wouldn't landscape be better?

Interesting point Ian. I think if used for print, portrait is still the convention here in Australia. I show both landscape and portrait on my website.

Is it majorly magenta tinted, or only a little?

Jan 28, 2014 at 09:19 AM

jeremy_clay
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Headshots

Very pink, as mentioned. Have you run off a print yet?

Jan 28, 2014 at 10:23 AM

Inga
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Headshots

jeremy_clay wrote:
Very pink, as mentioned. Have you run off a print yet?

Thanks Jeremy. No, no prints yet. Sadly, I don't print my work very often. But on the few occasions where I have, the results have been really good in the past.

Jan 28, 2014 at 10:26 AM

bobrcw
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Headshots

Too much magenta. When in doubt, it can be helpful to check skin tones in Photoshop with the eyedropper set to CMYK. For Caucasion skin, cyan should be roughly 1/4 the magenta value with yellow equal to or slightly higher than magenta. The magenta value should never exceed the yellow value.
Your magenta values average 10-30% above the yellow with no cyan at all. In RGB, you'd boost green to reduce magenta and reduce red to add cyan.
Google "CMYK skin tones" to learn more if you're interested.

Jan 28, 2014 at 11:09 AM

Inga
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Headshots

bobrcw wrote:
Too much magenta. When in doubt, it can be helpful to check skin tones in Photoshop with the eyedropper set to CMYK. For Caucasion skin, cyan should be roughly 1/4 the magenta value with yellow equal to or slightly higher than magenta. The magenta value should never exceed the yellow value.
Your magenta values average 10-30% above the yellow with no cyan at all. In RGB, you'd boost green to reduce magenta and reduce red to add cyan.
Google "CMYK skin tones" to learn more if you're interested.

Super practical and helpful advice! Thank you so much.

Jan 28, 2014 at 07:05 PM

Inga
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Headshots

Okay, so I've bought an I1 Display Pro and have calibrated my monitor...hopefully I'm on the right track now. Well, that and checking skin tones in PS using the CMYK tips above will hopefully improve things.

I calibrated to 100cm/m2 (which was the mid-point between the standard 120, and the measure ambient suggestion of 80). I have however discovered that viewing images in Windows Picture Viewer (Win 8.1) is ghastly. The images are way to dark (with crushed blacks), and oversaturated. Could this be because the display brightness is now too dark? Viewing the same image in Windows Picture Viewer and in Firefox is like chalk and cheese...

Also, on the CMYK skin tone adjustments, I don't seem to be able to add cyan into the particular images above using Lightroom. (I'm using LR for my editing, and just check the image in PS CS6, and due to the volume of editing that I do, adjusting each image in CS6 is not an option for me). Thoughts? Tips?

Feb 02, 2014 at 08:59 PM

gneto
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Headshots

Inga wrote:
I have however discovered that viewing images in Windows Picture Viewer (Win 8.1) is ghastly. The images are way to dark (with crushed blacks), and oversaturated. Could this be because the display brightness is now too dark? Viewing the same image in Windows Picture Viewer and in Firefox is like chalk and cheese...

Try to set your profiler to output ICC version 2 profiles instead of the default version 4. It worked for me, similar problem but on Win7.

Feb 09, 2014 at 06:55 PM

Inga
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Headshots

gneto wrote:
Try to set your profiler to output ICC version 2 profiles instead of the default version 4. It worked for me, similar problem but on Win7.

Yes, I picked that tip up somewhere a few days ago and it has done the trick. Thank you.

Feb 09, 2014 at 07:02 PM

marioalejandro
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Headshots

Magenta....

Feb 16, 2014 at 07:19 PM


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