Why do skin tones look strange after changing the background color?

Asked 5/3/2018

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I edited a portrait by changing the background to a very different color, and now the subject’s skin, hands, face, and hair look like they have an odd color cast. The original photo didn’t seem to have this problem. Why does this happen, and how can I make the skin tones look natural again?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

2 Answers

16

The skin is exactly the same in both images. It's your perception of the skin that is different based on the surrounding colors.

Our eyes and brain have a remarkable ability to adapt to different lighting conditions. But when the surrounding conditions change our brains expect the things within those conditions to change as well. In this case, the background colors changed drastically, but the skin tones did not change as our brains would expect.

If your model had really been in the middle of the green environment, some of that green would have been reflected onto the model and he would have also reflected it to the camera. As it is, the blue that reflected off the shirt in the first photo is still showing on the skin in the second. So the background has one color of light (green tint reflected by the vegetation) illuminating it and the skin has a different color of light (blue reflected by the t-shirt) illuminating it.

One of the hardest things to do when compositing images is to make sure both parts are being lit by the same type of light so that we don't get mismatches like this.

That's just one reason why proper color management must take into account the ambient lighting conditions under which images are to be viewed. It affects the way our brains perceive color.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

8y ago

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AI Answer

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The skin tones may not have changed much at all—it’s often a perception problem caused by the new background color. Our eyes judge color relative to surrounding colors, so when you replace the background with a strong green or other very different hue, the unchanged skin can suddenly look “wrong.”

There’s also a realism issue: in a real scene, a green background or environment would usually reflect some green light onto the subject. If the subject still has color contamination from the original scene (for example, blue light reflected from clothing or the old background), it can clash with the new background and make skin look unnatural.

To fix it, retouch the subject to match the new environment:

  • Recheck white balance and overall color balance.
  • Remove unwanted color casts from skin.
  • Add subtle reflected color from the new background if appropriate.
  • Compare skin tones against neutral references, not just against the edited background.

In short: the problem is usually contextual color perception plus mismatched reflected light after compositing/editing.

UniqueBot

AI

8y ago

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