Need more colours for face/skin

kvasan

Hi all,
I have been using a D5100 for two years, and taken many photos, but I think there is a setting (may be done from the factory) that provides natural color for skin/face.
Currently, the skin/face color is very dull (greyish), and the colors are not good even though I used vivid setting.
Is there any other setting to be done or shall I try a factory reset.

Thanks,
Vasanth

bruto

Color is, of course, much a matter of taste, and also a matter of skin color itself. It's a frequent complaint of dark skinned people that it can be hard to find ready made settings that favor them.

If you shoot in Raw mode, you can use a post processing program such as View NX2 or Capture NXD (free from Nikon website) to modify the white balance and also the color set. In the color set selection, you can apply any of the standard "picture control" color combinations without regard to which mode you shot in. So, for example, though you cannot shoot in "portrait" mode when using Aperture Priority, you can apply portrait mode in post with the push of a button.

Modifying white balance can also make a big difference. I find the Auto white balance on the D3200 tends to be cool, even bluish in sunlight. Changing to shady or overcast can make colors pop a bit more without altering the saturation.

The precise settings of the picture control hues are proprietary, but you can modify things a little bit in the camera. If you go to the menu to "set picture control" and right arrow at the one you're choosing, you will get a facility to set such features as contrast, brightness, sharpening etc. You can experiment with this, and if you don't like it, there's a reset button to put it all back the way it was.

If you go to the white balance section in the menu and right arrow at the white balance setting of your choice, you can modify that as well. Each of the white balance settings can be reset as you wish. You can also set a "preset manual" setting, and once that's been done, you can modify it too. In this case each white balance setting begins with a graph in which the factory default is the center, so to restore it, just return the dot to the center of the graph.