How To: Glamour Soft Skin

[SoCal Steve]

Several folks were asking how to do this yesterday, so I thought I'd serve it up. It's paraphrased from a Scott Kelby Photoshop book. Enjoy.

PHOTOSHOP SOFT SKIN

Step One -
Open the picture that you want to apply the soft skin effect to and duplicate the background layer by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J).

Step Two -
With the Layers pallet open, make sure that Layer 1 is selected. Under the Filter menu choose Gaussian Blur. Adjust the radius setting to a value between 3 and 6 pixels depending on how soft you want the skin to be. (Don't be afraid, you'll be reducing it.) This will put a blur over the entire image for now.

Step Three -
On the Layers Pallet click where it says Opacity and lower it by about 50%. This reduces the blur to a soft glow.

Step Four - IF DESIRED
This is to selectively bring some details back into the picture. Select the eraser tool with a soft-edged brush. Choose a small diameter for the brush and carefully go over just the eyes, mouth, and any other parts of the picture where you want to bring back detail. If it's a large area, increase the brush size to speed the process. If its a very small area, use the zoom tool and a small brush to get the details right.

Step Five - Flatten the Layers. Done.

[MattC]

Thanks,

A nice simple technique that is not going to be hard to remember.

Cheers

Matt

[MATT]

Thanks Steve,

Any PS Tips like these are invaluble.

Excellent and I will give it a try

MATT

[birddog114]

Steve,
Are you going to type all the tricks from the book of Photoshop CS for digital photographer from Scott Kelby? 1 trick/ day or we should call it as "Trick of the day"

[SoCal Steve]

Nah. It's just that folks asked for instructions on this one and it's a pretty short set of steps.

But, that said, always glad to help out when I can!

[Grev]

Yay, you guys rock, I don't care if it's ripped from the books, as a matter of fact, it's even better!

[sirhc55]

The effect is shown here:

http://forum.d70users.com/viewtopic.php?t=2804

[dooda]

I'm impressed Steve that you took the time to post this. Very good of you.
As of now my pp consists of curve, levels, saturation, unsharp mask, crop, clone, and that's about it. I welcome this type of simple information that I can do and not puke through my nipples.

[stubbsy]

I welcome this type of simple information that I can do and not puke through my nipples.

Now there's an image I didn't need inside my head

[matthew saville]

I've got a quickie little gallery tutorial on how to do this with examples.

http://matthewsaville.smugmug.com/Photo ... ment/59978

[MHD]

Awesome Matt, and WELCOME to the forums...

[Greg B]

Is that some kinda weird Canadian thing dooda?

[xerubus]

Welcome to the forums Matthew.. and nice site.

Dooda... that's plain disturbing

[matthew saville]

Thank you guys for the welcome! If it's of any use to anyone, there's also a few D70 specific galleries on my page, you can find them here:

http://matthewsaville.smugmug.com/Photo ... ment/59972

I try to do as much testing, reviewing, etc as I can but there's hardly ever enough time to put together a comprehensive review, being a student and working construction and shooting weddings/events.

-matt-

[sheepie]

Thank you guys for the welcome!

Welcome Matt, I see some of your galleries on the smugmug community, and it's good you have joined in here too
This is really the main site - the smugmug one is just a way that those of us on smugmug can join our galleries together. Enjoy your stay, and don't be afraid to contribute

Oh - and thanks for the tip Steve, much appreciated