On this channel I get a lot of really nice comments about the color and tone in my portraits, and I genuinely appreciate that. I’ve already covered the tonal side (contrast and texture) elsewhere, so in this video I focus on the hardest part: the color science behind great skin tones. Modern sensors across pretty much every brand can push skin into that unflattering green-to-yellow cast, and RAW files rarely look perfect straight out of the box. So I break down how RGB light actually mixes, why profiles and white balance matter so much, and how to use that knowledge to build skin tones that look clean, warm, and natural. I walk you through my five-step Lightroom process in order: (1) pick the right camera profile (and why I usually stick with Adobe Color/Standard), (2) correct white balance first because skin is insanely sensitive to small shifts, (3) use RGB curves to remove the sensor cast and shape golden vs peachy midtones (plus add subtle film-like color contrast), (4) use Calibration as “sensor tuning” to push skin away from green and into a nicer magenta/warm mix, and (5) finish with HSL to fine-tune skin per model and sync across a whole gallery. If you practice this on a grayscale, it clicks fast—and once it does, curves + calibration become ridiculously powerful.