Skin brightness

[reaction]

OK I don't even know how to ask this, a generic question which will be met with demands for specific situations.

If you ETTR then in PP you will need to take exposure back down. Other times you need to push a bit. Anyway in what range of brightness values should skin be put? Of course it will vary with race, high/low key, etc etc.

[Erin]

To be honest, that's like asking how long a piece of string is. But you've figured that out already and pretty much answered your own question.

Don't get caught up in the technicalities of post editing. If you've metered correctly, then you should have a good jumping point anyway. What looks right? What looks natural? There's no specific setting/action/whatever you can apply which will yield the same finished product on each image. Honestly, it comes down to the look you're going for.

[reaction]

it comes back to What looks natural. My monitor calibration doesn't seem to take into account the monitor brightness, so I really cannot say. What's the standard we measure from?