Do they juice the color for skin tones in P&S cameras?

[Stephen Lutz]

Here's one of my friend JJ I took last week with a Canon Pro 1. I was just shooting around, and when I was going through the pictures I kept coming back to this one. The skin tones look.... artificial, like the camera was optimized for them. Nothing I am really complaining about, but does it seem to you that P&S cameras in particular are tweaked for human skin tones and that SLRs have more neutral color? It seems that way to me.

[opus]

I think what's bothering me most about this shot is the sharpening. It's way too strong, giving all the edges around her a white halo. That's probably part of what's flattening her and making her look artificial.

I would imagine that P&S cameras have more sharpening than necessary, yes, because they don't expect people to post-process their shots like us DSLR users do.

[opus]

Oh, and I'm not seeing unnatural skin coloring anyplace but her face, which I would tend to say was caused by makeup. Her chest and arms look very nice, glowy, natural. Her face tones are flatter, dimmer, and whiter, lacking the glow of the rest of her body, so I would tend to believe it's the way her makeup is absorbing light.

[Stephen Lutz]

Oh, and I'm not seeing unnatural skin coloring anyplace but her face, which I would tend to say was caused by makeup. Her chest and arms look very nice, glowy, natural. Her face tones are flatter, dimmer, and whiter, lacking the glow of the rest of her body, so I would tend to believe it's the way her makeup is absorbing light.

Quite right about the over sharpening. I noticed that when I posted the thread, and was too lazy to delete it and correct it. Here is a much better one. Only change out of the camera is a very slight curves adjustment. Lovely skin tones, I thought, but they just look... too good.

[opus]

Yep, the more I look, and it's especially obvious in the second picture, the more I think that girl needs to change her makeup. It looks like she's using Mary Kay brand, which IMO gives that same dull flat grey look. She should go around to some of the cosmetics counters and give some other brands a try. Her face should be glowing like the rest of her nicely-tanned body.

Her lips and eyes look great! It's just her foundation that I'm having problems with.