Human skin color effects of tanning. Around the same age, women experience darkening of some areas of their skin. Human skin color fades with age. Humans over the age of thirty experience a decrease in melanin-producing cells by about 10% to 20% per decade as melanocyte stem cells gradually die. The skin of face and hands has about twice the amount of pigment cells as unexposed areas of the body, as chronic exposure to the sun continues to stimulate melanocytes. The blotchy appearance of skin color in the face and hands of older people is due to the uneven distribution of pigment cells
Biological pigment that are within the photosynthetic structure are more common, but complicated. Pigment-protein complexes that are outside of the photosynthetic system are less common, but have a simpler structure. For example, there are only two of these blue astaxanthin-proteins in the jellyfish, "Velella velella", contains only about 100 carotenoids per complex. A common carotenoid in animals is astaxanthin, which gives off a purple-blue and green pigment. Astaxanthin’s color is formed by creating complexes with proteins in a certain order. For example, the crustochrin has approximately 20 astaxanthin molecules bonded with protein. When the complexes interact by exciton-exciton interaction, it lowers the