Q:

Skin tone starting point in Lightroom/ACR?

How can I ensure that my skin tones are "correct" in Lightroom/ACR before I start my retouching workflow in Photoshop?  In other words, how do I know that my global color balance is correct (right color temp, right cyan/magenta) before I start smoothing out skin tones?  Is there a rule-of-thumb location I can select on a model (e.g. properly-lit midtone on forehead) that will tell me if my color balance is overall "correct" for the particular model's unique skin tone?
Again, I'm looking for setting the stage before I jump into the retouching aspect.

A:

To ensure absolute accuracy, you can use a colour card to create an accurate profile for your specific camera and the lighting conditions for each shot.
Tucked away at the bottom of the Lightroom Develop module is the camera profile dialogue. This is set to 'Adobe Standard' by default. Sometimes you can select profiles to match your camera's picture styles. But you can also use this to create custom, deadly accurate colour profiles.
There's a pretty in-depth how-to on it here: http://petapixel.com/2014/10/01/colorchecker-how-to-get-perfect-skin-colors-with-every-camera/

