Recently I've been going through various photoshop tutorials on how to make textures and I've been storing them as actions (so far I have bark, brick, burlap, camouflage, cheetah, concrete, cow, denim, gold, grass, laminated wood, lava, marble, metal, mud, paper, rock, rust, sand, scratches, snakeskin, stars, tiger, and water).  These allow me to create a unique texture for each Poser figure or prop at a mere fraction of the computer resources (all of the above texture actions require 48kb total).

What I don't have and would like to have are various skin tones.  Does anyone know where I can find a photoshop tutorial for creating a variety of skin tones?

I also once had a tutorial on how to make a figure look very realistic all within Poser...unfortunately, I've lost it and I only remember about a third of it.  Does anyone know of good tutorials on creating photo-realism?

You don't need to edit the texture to change the skin tone, just try changing the difuce color of the material with the desired tone, just remember to start with very light and pale tones, if you want to create your own textures try deep paint that's free and is a great tool for texturing, search for it at Melamkish links, I don't remember it right now.
Hope it help you.  

I've tried changing the color but the render adds the two colors together so I don't get exactly what I want.  I even tried desaturating the texture and using a color - Poser blends in a gray (from the texture map) to give the skin an ashen palor.  

I even have photoshop tutorials on how to make a pallet of realistic skin tones but, so far, they haven't explained what to DO with the pallet once it is made.

Finally, this method doesn't help the flat plastic look of the skin.  I have people look at my pictures and immediately think of figures from video games.  I want them to have to look real hard to determine they aren't real.

I've downloaded the file you recommended and I'll see what it does.  Thanks for the suggestions.

DuttonD,

i have a few suggestions too.
I tried to send them in PM; but I did something incorrectly.

So; email, or PM me if you have any questions about what I did, or did not send.

Sorry I don't quite understand your problem, but mat poses to change difuce color allways worked for me, I created some for the P4 people and are in the free stuff here, if want to try them and see if it is what you want to get, if you are looking for skin tones for the mil figures you will find them at runtimedna, just try them and tell me if it is or it is not what you want, or what else can be done to help you  

Quote:

I created some for the P4 people and are in the free stuff here...

Your textures are great and just the type of thing I'm trying to achieve but I'm trying to learn to make my own so I'll have a much greater variety.  Thanks anyways.

Here is a tutorial. It is very similar (more complete though) to the one I emailed.
http://poserpros.daz3d.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4030