How to achieve a perfect brown skin tone because every time I post process a portrait, the skin looks pink, red, yellow, green etc. but not the perfect/natural looking one. Any tips that can make the skin tone looks perfect and natural. Thanks!

sample references:
http://i61.tinypic.com/2zqtv15.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/14sl1yr.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/2mfxisx.jpg

Those 3 have VERY DIFFERENT skin color

Another VERY important thing is that the "perfect" skintone is the one that fits te color palette: for example, if your BG is green you will probably have to compensate on the skin with a bit of red or yellow and blue (highlights/shadows)

That is just an example. I suggest you check out the work of Mert & Marcus, for example, and you will see "the correct" color of skin does not exist

As far as your question of how to achieve skintones that are brown - well yellow + red - saturation + contrast will get you there from the raw and if you don't want the tone over the entire image, mask the skin

Another option is to manipulate the oranges / red / yellows in your image and desaturate, shift the hut to your desire outcome.

Cheers

Skin can be very tricky. One of the biggest problems in getting it to look right is saturation. Skin usually has a cast to it, and, when the image is processed, the saturation can, (and usually does), increase. When the saturation is increased, the skin's natural color cast becomes more apparent, and it can be nearly impossible to make it appear right. It often becomes necessary to decrease the saturation in the skin, to tone down the natural color cast it has. Every ethnicity, and/or mix of ethnicities has a different skin hue, so, that gives you a range - a little "fudge factor". What is important is that the skin "looks good" on a "calibrated monitor".
  Otherwise, I may use selective color, or, if the whole image, including the model, has the same, "undesirable" color cast, I often use "color balance". You really have to get accustomed to ALL of the tools, or you are going to have problems. Often, I put the model on a separate layer, then I can, more easily, adjust it, independent of the rest of the image. (It can be very time consuming, but can be very desirable if the image is very processed). (I'm sure glad that I don't have any time constraints when I am making an image - being an artist, and not any kind of commercial photographer)
-Don

There have been some discussions on this forum about using gradient masks from samples of the subject's skin, and in doing that, the color is usually right for that model/setup/scene.  It's just a way of simplifying skintones to 2 shades of the same general color, applied in moderation.

Any tips or techniques guys to put in mind when ever I color grading a fashion editorials? Much appreciated! )

Train your eye!! Get lots of Vogue like magazines to get use to what's current!! :-)

http://www.graphicconnectionkc.com/skin … ction.html

Ronny

If you want "accurate" skin color, time to invest in a ColorChecker from x-rite and learn how to use it and set up profiles for your gear.

x-rite has numerous webinars and videos in their archives on the calibration process.  Good one on ColorChecker is here: http://www.xritephoto.com/ph_learning.a … ateid=5343

Good luck.

What I've learned is that you have to decide on the color palette and stick with it.

Just like a painter or graphic designer.

Either you go for a monotone (be it Sephia or Blue tint, red tint, Black and white).

Or you play color against each other so that they are opposite, or compliment colors, or analog etc.

Now, skin is mostly perceived as pinksih, red or yellow, and anything and everything in between. That is if you want for skin to have "natural" color within your scene.

But you don't have to, you can tint it on top of that. For example, dark backdrop and red lips in a monochrome outfit? Well, you push skin towards blue or even magenta.

Blue sky in the background, you push skin towards the yellow.

Green backdrop and orange skin...

Or maybe you have hot magenta lips and lovely blue eyes, but everything else is distracting.... well you either make everything else more magentish , or blueish or yellowish and desaturate it.

So, good looking skin doesn't need to be "natural" color.

It is important, though, that skin tone is even(meaning luminosity), followed by the even saturation and hue.

So, you can make up looks as you go along, and as someone said, looking at enough good images will let you build a reference list in your mind, so that you know what can be done with each image.

And, lets not forget that in fashion, we are limited with "captured" color scheme. Meaning, you can't just go and change model's eye color to whatever fits you'r scheme, and you can't just go and change that dress from yellow to blue, or make up, but what we can do is change EVERYTHING else.

Need that lamp post in the backdrop to be pink in order to give balance to the image? Yes!
Change color of cars, buses, railings, plants, flowers, chairs, walls... and even clothes that someone else is wearing? For example, model is being arrested, those uniforms can be any way we want, she is eating some ice cream, we can make it be any color.

So, don't limit yourself with what model's skin needs, you can compliment the skin by changing other elements.

So many good responses. Like others have said, there is no perfect skin tone. There is a color theme that you should stick to within a photo, however. When it comes to editing skin color, my favorite tool is the color correction. It allows you to cancel out certain colors. Refer to the color wheel to get an idea of what colors cancel out what (opposite colors).

In the third image it looks like the model has a green hue to his skin making it appear greyish or washed out. You could try adding a bit of red to help cancel that out. However, remember that for some photos skin tones that would appear odd individually actually work with the color scheme of that particular image.

The 3 images you show ALL have very different perfect skin color! 

The first one is green and is contaminated that way to integrate better with the overall scene...the second one is highly saturated and is very orange but pretty...and the third is desaturated... so there is very little skin color at all... but just highlights and the very muted skin color.  These are all current popular  looks...but the idea of perfect skin color is sometimes made up by the artist themselves... for artistic and creative effect. 

So by way of your example...there is NO perfect skin color.  Its based on YOU and your creative likes and judgement for the intended effect in the image.  My idea of perfect color skin could be very different from your perfect tastes...and the images we produce might have distorted skin treatments to fit certain creative and artistic statements we want to create.

How to do it: There is a particular way I prefer to do skin color correction...it is with "curve adjustment layers".  These adjustment layers are clear, transparent, and blend in with the underlying color perfectly...and plus you can use its mask to selectively paint in the color correction exactly just where you want it and by how much.  Skin detail is not blocked up by this method, the skin pores do not get covered over...and you can easily create exactly the effects you show in your examples.  Most commercial color correction today is done with clear, transparent adjustment layers or "color look-up table" LUT technology which was just introduced into Photoshop not long ago for the first time.

Specific Solutions: For picture one...just take the curve adjustment panel and change it to the green channel... and then pull up the center of the green curve just a little bit.  It will turn your whole image transparent green.  Do a control/command I to invert the mask from a white mask to a black mask and the globally applied green will go away.  Now, select the mask on the layer so its highlighted... and take a soft white low opacity brush and paint on the mask where you want that green correction to be applied, or the orange color treatment to be applied.  The more you paint with the white brush on the selected mask... the more intense the correction will be. Paint exactly where you want the correction to be applied.  Paint with a black brush to reverse the effect you just applied...its interactive. 

The orange color is created by pulling up the red channel and by pulling down the blue channel to get orange. 

For the third one...use a HSL (Hue/Saturation/Luminance) adjustment layer... and pull down the saturation on that layer... and then select the mask and paint on it ... it will apply the low saturation effect onto the face till you are creatively happy with it.

Cheers

Ray