How to Paint Realistic Skin in Photoshop

For those of you who have tried to add realistic skin tones to color graphic images, you have probably found that this is a challenging task. Realistic-looking skin is not one color; it is a combination of colors, lighting and textures. Special Photoshop brushes have been created by David Nagel for applying skin tones and textures to illustrations. You may download these for use in building skin toned paint layers for your objects that offer a realistic-looking final image.

Things You'll Need

• Photoshop CS
• Drawing to be colored
• David Nagel's skin paint brushes
• Zip utility

Instructions

1. Download Dave Nagel's series 20 and 27 paint brushes for skin tones and skin textures. Unzip the file using any Zip utility. Put the file where you can find it easily---your desktop is a good choice.

2. Double-click the Zip file to decompress it and then extract the .abr file to your Photoshop brushes directory. In Windows this directory is located at C:/Program Files/Adobe/Photoshop CSx/Presets/Brushes, and on the Mac, you will find it at username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Presets/Brushes.

3. Open Photoshop and select the brushes palette. Click on the small arrow in the upper right corner of the palette. From the flyout menu select load brushes and click on the new abr files.

4. Open the graphic on which you want to paint the skin tones. Before you begin coloring the skin, select the background colors that will be behind the object.

5. Pick a base color as your foreground color. You can use a color from Curvemeister's skin tone swatches for this. You will be using the Paint brushes to add realistic details of tone and texture.

6. Use Photoshop selection tool to outline the skin area of the object. Zoom in close enough to be able to carefully select the outline and use the + and -- keys to edit your selection.

7. Use the skin tone paint brushes to color the skin areas. For areas that you want darker, go over the area several times with the brush. You can also decrease the opacity for lighter areas. Lips are darker. Cheek bones may be lighter on top and darker underneath.

8. Use the smudge tool to smoothly blend between different color areas.

Tips & Warnings

• Be patient. Creating realistic skin tones on a graphic is challenging and may require several tries to get the look you want. Paint each part of the graphic on its own layer so that you can edit without changing the rest of your work.

• Monitor calibration affects the appearance of all colors including skin tones to the viewer. So what looks great on your computer may look greenish or yellowish on someone else's screen. The Dave Nagel brushes were created for Photoshop CS and will not work in Photoshop version 7 or below.

References

• The Accurate Reproduction of Skin Tones
• Lighting Effects Tutorial
• Photoshop selection tools tutorial

Resources

• Skin texture brushes from David Nagel
• Skin tones brushes from Dave Nagel
• Skin tone swatches