Get Perfect Skin Tones with this easy Trick in Premiere Pro

Perfect Skin Tones

What are perfect skin tones? We can tell whether someone doesn't look good or is underexposed. But what exact changes do we need to make to get those perfect skin tones?

We use the Lumetri Scopes for that. The scopes panel offer a couple of measurement tools, but in this video we focus on just the waveform and the vectorscope.

These area tools that measure the exposure and the colors in your video.

The Waveform

To measure the exposure, we use the waveform. It gives a presentation of the brightness of your shot from 0 IRE, absolute black to 100 IRE, absolute white.

When the waveform displays your entire shot, it could be overwhelming. So create a simple mask on the skin tones of your talent. This isolates only the skin tones and you'll be able to make easier changes.

For light skin tones, the waveform should be around 70 IRE. This is a standard, but not something you have to follow all the time. Night scenes or creative work can and should deviate from it.

Dark skin tones usually lay between 40 and 60 IRE. The workflow is exactly the same and depends on the darkness of the skin tones.

The Vectorscope

Finally we have the vectorscope, which measures color and saturation. For skin tones, we focus on the color. Again, isolate it using a mask.

We can find a guideline in the vectorscope, try to change the colors of your shot so that the vectorscope highlight aligns with that guideline.

Now look at the before and after. It's a huge improvement! This is an easy trick to always get perfect skin tones.

BenQ PD3420Q

Big thanks to BenQ for the support on this video. Their new monitor, PD3420Q, is build for creatives and video editors who seek a great monitor on a budget.

The IPS LED Panel covers 98% of the DCI-P3 profile, offers HDR-10 and has a ΔE ≤ 3. The 21:9 ratio 34" display with a resolution of 3440x1440 offers plenty of space for you UI.

Learn more about the BenQ PD3420Q and how it helps your creative workflow.