Overlay Shadows & highlights on skin? REd!

Do ya all do 50% gray overlay layers and dodge and burn for shadows and highlights on skins?

The base color is kinda redish but looks perfect once uploaded and worn; the shadows and highlights are supposed to be darker and more neutral color, instead they're way too red...they pick up the tint from the base color...what am I doing wrong?

Any suggestions> hints?
Is there a better way to do shading other than overlay layers..maybe?

Thanks so much in advance

Pompo

I'm working on my first skin and ran into this exact same problem except for me the dodge and burn went too yellow. I threw that layer away and I ended up using the stamp tool. I set the opacity at 30% or 20% set the edge soft and stamped from a lighter area over the darker. Then set to 10% to blend edges. This was a bit laborious, but kept overall good skin tone. I'd also like to know if there is an easier way.

Okay, I was just having this same problem today. My husband stepped in with a solution...

Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer (the half black, half white circle at the bottom of the Layers palette).

In the dialog that pops up move the Saturation slider to -100. Everything will go gray at this point.

Choose the Fill/Bucket tool and flood the layer with black. The colors should return after this step.

On this layer and using a brush set to white paint over the areas that are too saturated (red). This should tone them down quite a bit. Fiddle with your brushes to get the effect you want.

I don't know if this is the most perfect solution but it's what we've managed to figure out so far. ^_^

I do it a bit differently. I make two duplicates of my base color layer. One I adjust for how I want the skin to look in shadows and the other for highlights, then I use layer masks to reveal them in the appropriate places. The benefit to doing it that way is that it's completely nondestructive and very flexible.

Blessing on your hubby, it works like a charm.

-Sylvia