Sep 26, 2010 Posted on Sep 26, 2010 | 0 comments

Joel Grimes & Desaturated Skin Tones: Inspiration & Technique

First let me say that I LOVE Joel Grimes!
He’s got two new tutorials on the Wacom site that are awesome.

There’s a forum topic posted in the Photoshop Support Group on Flickr about destaurating skin tones, similar to that of what Joel Grimes does.
I tried out and posted the technique that Calvin Hollywood discussed at Photoshop World, and maybe this will be helpful in achieving the desaturated skin tone look.

Here’s the question on the forum…
“Now I dont’ want to copy Joel Grimes’ style by any means, but still curious in the method to achieve his desaturated, but not lifeless tones, as seen here for example
Amy – Death Valley/Badwater
I know I need to desaturate the red channel, but how do I then make the skin look brownish and not gray?”

Here’s the result that I got by moving a couple of sliders around in Camera Raw.

Click on the images to enlarge

Example 1:

Example 2:

This is what I did:

Example 1:
-Opened image in Camera Raw and made No adjustments
-Right-clicked on the opened Camera Raw file and chose New Smart Object via Copy
-Double-clicked on the top layer to open it in Camera Raw
-Clicked on the HSL/Grayscale tab
-Under Saturation, I moved the Red & Magenta slider both to -45
-Under Luminance, I moved the Red & Magenta slider both to +45
-Pressed ‘OK‘ to return back to Photoshop
-Changed the blend mode of the top layer to ‘Color‘

Now I can turn the top layer on or off to see the difference.

Example 2:
Same thing, but because the photo had more orange in the skin tones as opposed to Red/Magenta, I altered the Orange saturation to -45 & the Orange luminance to +45. Then changed the Blend Mode to ‘Color‘.

Photos by Regina Pagles