Technique How to make a doll appear less yellowed in photos?

I can't really help with the camera tricks - I'd suggest looking into photo editing software if it bothers you! Your dolls look lovely, though, and don't appear that yellow to people who aren't aware what color they originally were!

 

Line Camera compresses photos in an ugly way - many mobile apps do, unfortunately! GIMP is a free, opensource editing program similar to photoshop and you can look up some tutorials on adjusting curves to correct skin tone.

 

Long ago I read a book that recommended shooting everything on ‘Cloudy’ light balance because the colors would end up being truer. IDK if that’s really reality, but I do find that it adds a bit of warmer tint to everything so that cold blue light in your first photo is less pronounced, which might reduce the yellowy pale of the resin. Volks dolls always look kind of yellow to me in my photos even if they’re not super yellowed in real life (in my case it doesn’t help that they’re next to much pinker Cerberus Project dolls a lot), so I think surrounding them in warm tones and shooting in brighter light helps minimize some of that.

Barring that, Photoshop. Playing around with levels and color balance until they look less jaundiced will always help. Or if it’s really annoying you, you can paint over their skin with a peachy or pinky color and dial back the opacity until it tints the resin more subtly. (It’s a fiddly process, but it works. I used to do it sometimes for an SD16 I had who was much pinker than her body whenever her neck looked too yellow for my taste.)

 

They both look so pretty to me - and not at all disturbingly yellow! But if it bothers you that much, have you considered doing something to correct their color? I love this thread about color correction for yellowed dolls.

 

The very best way to correct, or otherwise modify, your overall color is to do it in post processing, e.g. in your editor. If you want to do it in camera then you'll need to use a white balance setting that will make your image cooler. "cloudy" will warm your image so is in the wrong direction. Try your incandescent light WB setting.

 

I'll echo the others saying they don't really look overly yellow, because they don't, not to me anyway. But if it bothers you, any editing program that lets you correct the hue of the photograph will work. I particularly like Adobe Lightroom (subscription service is $10/month, and it's absolutely worth it to me) because it lets you adjust the saturation of certain colors.

 

Did you end up downloading GIMP? If so, try using this procedure: Correct Color Cast in Photos From Poor White Balance With GIMP

I used a similar tool in Photoshop Elements (remove color cast) and got this result for your first photo:
remove color cast example by AndreaJEP, on Flickr

I think the dolls look yellow in the photos because the white balance is off, not because the dolls are actually that yellow. So, whether you get GIMP or not, make sure you set the white balance correctly in your camera

 

I take photos with my phone, I use this app called SNOW and I love it, there's bunch of filters it will make your doll look more natural skin tone! More like peachy, rosy or paler! Bonus are the cute animal or accessories stickers~

 

I did a quick "before and after" in Photoshop. I used a selective color layer to add red and blue to the yellows and neutrals in the photo.



I would recommend using an editing program like Photoshop, but if you want to do it on camera you can adjust your white balance. Adjusting the white balance so the photo is overall warmer may make the doll appear less yellow. I think the best option for doing it on camera is if your camera has a "White Balance Shift." You can adjust that to add a little magenta (and a little blue or amber depending on if you prefer cooler or warmer photos) to the photo and that should help balance out the yellow of the skin.

 

As many people said, the white balance is one way to do that. But it also changes the overall photo. If you make it more yellow, the doll will actually be even more yellow but it doesn't look that way because the background is also more yellow. I'd only do that if I want that effect though. I think your first photo looks better in "normal" white light.

If you really want to change the color of only the skin, use Gimp or Photoshop (you can get CS2 for free).
For Gimp: Duplicate the picture and use Hue/Saturation (the name might be a little bit different because I use programs in German). Change the color so that you like the skin color, do not care about the background and clothes color. Apply a mask and make it so that the layer is transparent and you see only the original layer below. Then use a very soft brush with about 20% density and draw over the skin areas to make it less yellow.
In Photoshop you can use non-destructive layer filter instead of duplicating the layer.

However, I agree with the others. I don't think your dolls are too yellow. They look lovely

 

Another "cheap" and especially fast trick would be - for example in Photoshop - to desaturate and lighten only the yellows.

You can either do that with the Camera Raw filter in newer versions via the tab HSL/Grayscale, with Hue/Saturation selecting the Yellow channel or with Selective Color.
I'm sure there are equivalents of these tools in GIMP, too.
Or just use Photopea, which is an online editor very similar to Photoshop (o゜▽゜)o☆

Just played with the settings and also removed the heavy blue tint! ^^