Dark/Light Skin Overlay-Mass Production

I've been meaning to create some skins because I'm just so jealous of the ones currently going around. What I want to do is create skins from dark color to light color. But the problem is that I dont want to keep messing with the tools in photoshop. I'd rather do the work one time then have some sort of overlay that will go on just as if I had done the burning on that skin color. Is there a way to accomplish this? and how?

Use layers for everything (details, shading, highlighting) with a lower base in the solid colour of the skin. Then you can just replace the solid layer for each tone. I've tried that for my series-in-progress, thinking it would save time... but for each skintone, I needed to tweak the shading a fair bit to keep it natural and nice looking. *shrug* So still a lot of effort.

The structure of the SL client skin textures (found in the SecondLife/character folder) give a lot of helpful hints as to how a Photoshop file should be layered for a skin. Also, IMVU skin examples (although much cruder in detail) are actually quite sophisticated in their layering method. They provide some excellent examples of skin layering in PSD files. All layers containing the highlight, shadow, skin tone, skin grain, etc. are nicely grouped, and sit above the base skin layer. The only drawback is that the skin designer never bothered to name the layers descriptively, so finding stuff takes a little exploring. The base skin is nothing more than a flat flesh colored fill that outlines the template shape.

I'm don't remember exactly where I picked up the IMVU examples (it was quite a while ago), but I believe I used "IMVU tools". IMVU tools is an application that costs around $6.00 US after establishing a developers account with IMVU.

Gradient Map adjustment layer or combination of them can be powerful tool for this sort of task -- you can use greyscale version of skin as source, and define gradients of specific skintone you want to have applied to it... this helps to remove part of the usual issues with shades/highlights making skin look over- or desaturated, that you normally get when working with single base colour.

The results still need tweaking, but you have more and easier control over them.

I have also been wanting to create skins. My question is this. . .is it possible to use a picture of someone or a body and apply the skin tone from that into the templates as opposed to using color from photoshop. I am interesting in a realistic skin. This is all new to me so HELP!!! lol

Yes Blue, you can use photos, hand painting, anything you like to create the skin texture as you would any other image in photoshop. How you choose to use the tools and methods is up to you and what ultimately will make your skin unique. Be aware that the AV texture map is quite distorted and creating any kind of detailed skin or clothing texture is not a trivial matter ! Additionally consider that SL is not a photorealistic environment and even lighting does not behave as it does in RL, so at least in my view, creating a "realistic" skin is very much about making it work in context rather than making it look photographic.