Novice question about working with skin tone

[lewis jacobs]

As someone whos still learning to grade, if I were to stick to one method of working with skin tone to keep things simple for now am I best keying skin in a layer mixer, parallel mixer, or using second input node and piping the key downstream (as on the tutorial on here)?

Also why am sometimes unable to create a second input node?

Edited June 9, 2022 by lewis jacobs

[Tom Evans]

Always try to get your skin tones where they should be with your overall global grade. Balancing an image with the skin tones in mind often gets the rest of the image where it should be.

When doing secondary work on skin tones, try the broadest brushes first. Personally I try to reach for the hue vs. sat and hue vs. hue curves. If that does not work, I will key.
 

[Nate578]

that makes sense. Thanks

[lewis jacobs]

On 6/10/2022 at 6:26 PM, Tom Evans said:

Always try to get your skin tones where they should be with your overall global grade. Balancing an image with the skin tones in mind often gets the rest of the image where it should be.

When doing secondary work on skin tones, try the broadest brushes first. Personally I try to reach for the hue vs. sat and hue vs. hue curves. If that does not work, I will key.
 

Thanks

Would it be a good idea to always have a second source input for skin incase I need it and pipe it into a parallel node stack where I'm doing my look?. Also whats the advantage of a second source input over just immediately creating a parallel node?