Ok Im re-colouring a very old black and white image...done all the restore work, removed the cuts and the folds and the missing bits.

Started the re-colour and looks good but I always have trouble with getting flesh tones to look real...downloaded a few tutes and they do ok. I have seen some great flesh work from you guys and was wondering if you would care o leave some tips n tricks here to help out a fellow chopper.

One thing to remember I'm not asking for some one to do the work, I wanna improve my own skills. Im sure a few people will benefit from some expert advise as well, flesh tones I think are one of the hardest things to do.

Lurker

good question, I will wait with you for somebody who knows!!

tough.You need to take a pic of your hand in a neutral light and use it as a model for luminosity, specularity, colors.You need to play with layer modes to recreate that correct luminosity that will tend to be altered by the color work you'll do to it, here's my only skin job, it's a tut for a european photoshop magazine printed a couple years ago I think.
I noticed just now I have forgotten to erase some parts of layers.awfull finition.

I tried something out that seems to work ok for me. Always had trouble with it being to dark and fake so I messed around with it a while ago. Took a flesh example like ledirlo showed and picked a lighter area of it and not too pink. Then on a new layer colored in the area I wanted. Then switch the layer to "color" and see where I'm at. Most times I need to mess with the opacity of the layer OR go into "hue/saturation and mess with the hue a bit to get the right tone and also the saturation to maybe reduce the tone a bit once I got the right hue. I've done the tuts and all too but wasn't happy with them as much. Looked too fake. What I found in flesh color is less is more. Here is a quick example of what I just mentioned....good luck bud!

sweet drilo you got a link to the tute you wrote mate

Mg trying that method as we type mate

Dont use a single color while doing it, it will look flat and fake. If you look at the photo of the face you will see some parts are more yellowish and some have more magenta (nose, cheeks...) try to sample different colors from a photo while you are coloring and it should be much better
good luck

for more realism: the greenish underlayer, like the Flemish painters did...flesh is uncolored...blood in veins gives its colour (look at dead people).

Here is a quick example of using more colors for coloring.
If was done in about 6-7 mins
I sampled colors from this image:


This is the original B&W image from google:


And this is the colorized version:


At the end i used selective color adjustment to fine tune red and yellow to the desired values.
Some parts could still have a little less yellow in them (highlights) and you would probbly want more cyan in the shadows than in other parts of the flesh tones
And keep in mind that hair/lips/teeth/eyes color is basicly a variation of the skin tone so it will look unnatural if you go with a completely different color
Hope this helps at least a little bit

sweet am havin trouble with the hair line....need to penit a little cleaner I think

thanks guys and keep the advice coming. This is helping heaps.

Careful use of dodge and burn (mainly dodge highlights) can do wonders

Although everyone does have at least some skin pigmentation, even new borns.

now thats the damn truth.......tattoo's look the way they do because the skin is transparent. Thats why black looks navy blue in the skin........i love a good artist.....they are helpful.
EDIT:
PIGMENTATION .......ok so its not CLEAR. .....its still transparent......just tinted oooohhhhh and tattoo's dont show well on DARK skin......because of the PIGMENTATION. Man i love this learning thing... ....come on ya'll ask something else while its going.

Look at hi end magazine covers for skin tones. Those are already corrected by professionals. Glossy page magazines. Yes, even playboy. (vanity Fair is a good one if you have it there)

very good.