Hans van Eijsden, a fashion and portrait photographer based in the Netherlands, just published a really great article describing how he goes about getting skin tones just right. Most important, he describes how he does so without spending hours manually editing each image. For a professional photographer, time is money, so an automated, repeatable method is really important. In brief, Hans' method is to use an X-Rite ColorChecker Passport in combination with some clever profile editing in Adobe's DNG Profile editor, together with some knowledge gleaned from using dcpTool. He also describes in some detail why the "hue twists" I've described in previous posts (e.g., here and here) might be great for amateur photographers that just want an image that looks good as soon as they open it, hue twists aren't always great for pros.
If you have an interest in how a fashion photographer gets skin tones perfect in a real commercial setting, this is a must-read. While you're on Hans' site, you should also take the time to check out some of his work - there are some really great images there.
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