#poc tutorial

however pink-washing (i’m aware there is another definition for this term but i’m referring to washing out a skintone to make it red-pink) and yellow-washing are equally as wrong! and they are also easily avoidable!! 

in the past it was a commonly held (and incorrect) belief that european people (a term i’m going to use broadly for non-poc) had a ‘fair’ and ‘pink’ undertone to their skin [and it was an encouraged beauty standard to try and emulate that fair pale pink skin] while asian people (particularly east asian ethnicities) had ‘yellow’ skin (as seen in racist caricatures and a plethora of terrible and outdated race theories).

thus pink-washing and yellow-washing both embrace two extreme ends of the scale and it’s simply better and more respectful to try and maintain the skintone of the idol in your gifs! there are deeper contextual explanations of this if you would like to learn more!

❓ identifying pink/yellow gifs

let’s start with recognising what colouring is a no-go ❌ if you’re a gifmaker you’re probably fighting a battle on two fronts — against the whitewashing music shows and then the struggle to restore skin colour without turning the dial up so much that you’ve changed their entire skintone.

for this example below i found a kpop psd posted recently (in the past few months actually) and applied it to a basic bright-lighting sort of facecam. 

the original facecam has no heavy stage lighting (as stages can often have really strong red or pink lights that also darken the colours) so it’s an easy one to follow along with.

the gif on the left has only a basic curves layer while the gif on the right has the added kpop psd on it. it’s a very stark difference in jungwon’s skintone and i would definitely classify this as an unnatural skin tone.

following a selective colour layer (to subtly increase the warm tones of his skin) / a photo filter (to counter the pale blue sort of lighting) and a colour balance - we can end up with a product like this.

now of course, this is only a very simple sort of colouring. and everyone has different colouring styles so you can go bonkers with all the colour manipulation for the blues and greens and purples as you like!

but what if the stage is just naturally red? 

may i introduce you to the dreaded seventeen stages during face the sun era then 😭

as you can see there is already a very heavy sort of pink-red cast on his skin (that only gradually got worse as the stage started because of those damn lights and shadows 😭) but we can easily work around them!

so here’s our stage lighting with no adjustments 

and now even though we got rid of the pink-tone it’s been replaced with a very strong yellow. (you might think i’m exaggerating out here but there are unfortunately a mite too many gifs like this). jeonghan’s skin (not to mention the members in the back) have been dialled up to a wasp yellow.

and unfortunately (at least in my experiences) there have been quite a few of the below instances (especially for this stage) so ultimately it is all about finding the right balance between getting rid of the harsh, unsaturated lighting while also bringing back warmth to the skintone while ALSO not giving the idols a spray-tan.

❓ so what can i do?

well i’m glad you asked! let’s go back to the jeonghan example we just used. here’s the stage gif once more without any adjustments or layers.

now i’ll add a simple curves layer (to even out the general lighting) and we end up with this. it’s obviously much better. the red-brown cast has no become darker creating a greater contrast with jeonghan’s skintone versus his black and white outfit! it’s a nicer gif overall but i want to bring out his skintone ever so slightly to make up for the harsh white lights on the highlights of his face.

i added another selective colour layer (increasing the reds with the cyan slider and then the black slider while also pushing on the yellow slider as well) and a gradient map (fading from black to orange and set to soft light at a 20% opacity)! and this is my final result!

❓ tips and tricks

— colour balance is your best friend! if a gif seems too blue (and hence giving your subject a pale purple-red sort of look) bring back the slider to the yellow side. or vice versa. it often sorts out all the little hiccups that a curves layer might have provided. — create layer masks to compare skin colour. it’s always useful to just have a little circle where you can see the skintone before and afters! — don’t just rely on selective colour to bring colour back into skin. this is where i find that i often trip up to overcompensate for whitewashing. a gradient map works wonders if set at the right opacity and you can adjust the skin colours minutely afterwards! — this might seem like a reduntant theme but it’s more than okay to ask for help! even i’ve found that i struggle with colouring a gif right and it’s better to get two or three heads in the game than one 😭

there is no one method or psd that will automatically graces oneself with perfect and correct colouring but it’s a matter of practice and figuring out what methods works for you!