Smoothing skin

[Mitchell]

In portraiture it is common to see skin "smoothed". I'm not a fan of excessive PP to make things look plastic, but can anyone shed some light on a good technique just to gently smooth out skin in Photoshop?

Thanks in advance...

[Yi-P]

I'll go in with a few basic steps here:

Use the healing brush tool with a round, soft brush-head, create a new layer above your picture. Press hold ALT+Click on a spot on the face where is the cleanest...

Adjust your brush size so that each click is just about size of red blemishes or pimples on the face, remove the most obvious ones and leave the smaller ones behind.

Create another layer on top. Select paint brush tool, again with LARGE (100px+) soft round brush-head. Set your paint brush opacity to about 10-20% try not beyond 30%. Hardness of the brush set to about 30-40%, this will be a very gently brush.


ALT+click on a the model's face to get the skin tone. Click and hold the paint brush down and pain away smoothly along the same skin tone area. Repeat the brush on top of the same area if necessary.

On last touch, select eraser tool, large round soft brush, 40-60% opacity, paint away any excess you have.

And this is called 'digital make-up'  PS. You can add colour to the face make-up by selecting a different colour on the brush and paint gently with low opacity, if you understand a bit about make-up, you can fake it out somehow.. But Im still learning this...

[beetleboy]

I wouldn't recommend "painting" when it comes to retouching faces unless you want the old-school "air-brushed" look. You're effectively painting out the grain in the image which will give you that fake "plasticy" look.

The best way to smooth skin tone is to start with Yi-P's technique and the healing brush (although I find the extra layer unneccesary since you can always go back to any stage with the history brush). Then, grab the stamp tool, switch it to about 20% and "Lighten" mode and start stamping! What you're doing is bringing up the tonal values of any darker areas but leaving the grain and general tone as is. This method evens out the skin very naturally although it does take some practice.

You can also use the stamp tool in this mode to lighten up shadows under the nose/neck and bags under the eyes.

There are many situations where you can use this technique in reverse, with the brush set to "Darken" mode.

[Yi-P]

Thanks Liam, I've learned something new today

After a quick play following your suggestion and steps, I came in with this:




Is there a noticeable difference between the two methods? The original untouched is quite obvious ofcourse...

[beetleboy]

That's getting there Yi-P! The biggest difference between the two methods is most visible in prints and that's the grain.

Here is an example of how far it can get you:

[kenny12]

wow that looks awsome

i've just been using the extra layer / gaussian blur method but this one seems much better

[Mitchell]

As always - ask and ye shall receive knowledge!

Thanks Yi-P and beetleboy...

[beetleboy]

No probs Mitchell!

Of course there are a bazillion ways to skin a cat (and all enjoyable!!) so it's best to find what works for you.