Face detection is an important process used to extract faces from static images or video frames. In this paper, a face detection system is demonstrated using skin color segmentation algorithm. The skin pixels of the face are mapped to a modified YUV color space to avoid brightness included in RGB color space and for easy segmentation of skin. In order to tackle the variation in illumination and color constancy of the face image, MSRCR (MultiScale Retinex Color Restoration) algorithm is used. These algorithms are implemented using MATLAB GUI. The significance of MSRCR is studied by evaluating and comparing the contrast and luminance performance factor with histogram equalization.