This month I am am featuring an older doll from 2016 and a new head that is light tan, while the doll is pure white. So this creates a problem obviously as the colors are mismatched in certain lighting situations. My workflow in these cases is to adjust the photo with a camera white balance that is more red (opposite to cyan) since tan has a lot of cyan. This yields a warmer color which often neutralizes the tan. I also vary the magenta/green channels - depending if filming outdoors. When filming outdoors, I use more magenta to offset green foliage color spill.
Next, in Nikon Raw (Capture NX), I import the raw image and change the settings to get a neutral color differential bias between tan and white. From there I further adjust the color in photoshop and brighten up the image which helps get rid of any residual tan color. Also, a trick I use in many pictures, and is something I have also seen in various Youtube tutorials is to duplicate the image, convert a layer to B&W or any color, and overlay them using a soft light blend effect. I will also add a layer mask to adjust any non matching areas, and after a bit of trial error, the image can be converted to represent a natural skin white color. This is of course quite laborious, but in these cases where I have a beautiful picture, I go this route. Since I have dolls in many shades, I find matching an issue even among tans, and after collecting over 50-60 heads from various promo jobs, I mix and match all the time - sometimes the results are acceptable only in pictures. In a future blog, I will show the adapters I have made to suit these combos. I have since made many to adapt to all my dolls.
In these pics, I used my home-made magnetic quick removable eyes, since vendor provided ones are difficult to move and get the correct eye angle. I also only use 14mm Irises, since I prefer larger eyes over the standard 12mm
Below are the final results - enjoy the pics
Mishka
Click on image for full size & gallery
