Thank you for the kind words.
"Faces and arms are the one area that's giving me the biggest problem. For so many of the scans, the skin tones are too pink or even too red, as well as often being blotchy in appearance. Most of the things I've tried to do to correct those problems just seem to make them worse."Generally, I leave blotchy and uneven colour alone, because I see it as part of the authentic "old comic" look. However with
"Duckling to swan" I ended up having to repair so
much that the un-retouched areas stood out badly, and I ended up filling or airbrushing most of the background. I thought about fixing the blotchy colour on the red-head's arm, but frankly I was sick of fiddling with this cover.
As regards skin-tones, I hesitate to give advice. There are people on this forum who can actually draw, and they're better qualified to comment. All I can suggest is:
1. I use the non-aligned Clone tool with a fuzzy "brush" for re-touching. This allows me to "spray" mixed colour and pattern from one area over another.
2. For subtle work, I never "spray" at 100% opacity. Several semi-transparent "coats" of colour gives a more natural look. Similarly, if I mask out and Bucket Fill areas of the picture (usually the background), I have learned that it's good to fill at about 70% opacity or less. This lets the old uneven colour of the original comic "grin through" which looks more authentic (IMHO anyway...).
3. Don't try to do too much at once. I usually have to zoom into the image to retouch it, and I find it very difficult to judge how it will look viewed at the normal size. So I do a little bit, zoom out to check, zoom in, do a bit more, zoom out etc. If I try to do a lot in one go, I usually screw it up.
I'm self-taught on this stuff, so there may well be better ways of doing things. Perhaps someone might post some advice in the
Tips & Techniques section of the forum.
