I don't want to see your question go unanswered, but I have been hesitant to start this discussion knowing that my wife and I are taking a long weekend to a cabin starting in an hour or so. I'll have my iPad with me, but limited Internet connectivity, so, if I don't respond, you'll know why. We should return on Tuesday.
In the interim, let me make the following comments:
From the way you phrased your question, it sounds like you think that getting proper skin color is relatively easy, and just a few tips will tell you almost all that you need to know. This couldn't be further from the truth. People spend years learning how to do this, and make money as consultants helping publishers and other commercial organizations achieve this.
First of all, your goal just can not be limited to just getting good skin colors, your goal must be accuracy for all colors. We can go into the reasoning behind this in subsequent communications.
Second, getting good skin color starts with the lighting of your subject. Mixed light sources (eg, tungsten plus flash, or fluorescent lights) will make getting good color next to impossible.
Third, to get good skin color, your system MUST be set up to display colors accurately. If your monitor isn't accurately representing the numbers in Photoshop, you will never know if you have achieved good color. This means that you must use a hardware calibrator system to generate monitor color profiles that are specific to your setup. Here is a reasonable article that discusses monitor color profiles:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/change-color-management-settings . Unfortunately, this article just scratches the surface of this issue.
In addition, when making color decisions, you must view your monitor only under well-controlled, highly stable / reproducible lighting conditions.
It is very helpful if you have a completely different viewer that you know is color-accurate. You can then use this to confirm your color editing decisions. iPhone 5 and 6, as well as the latest couple of versions of iPads are good. Others may, but it is a hit or miss proposition. Search for reviews of other devices that contain the term, "Delta E". This is a measure of color accuracy.
Finally, be aware that while the displays on laptops are getting better, they are rarely as good as even a mediocre desktop monitor. The best investment you can make for color accuracy is a good high-end monitor designed for color accuracy.
More later. Gotta run.
Tom M
