Thereʼs plenty of skin softening (or skin smoothing) techniques and tutorials available on the internet. Some are pretty good, some not so much. Obviously, this is just my opinion and you should use whichever method or photoshop action you’re comfortable with but I thought by sharing one of my favorite techniques it might give you an alternative to play around with.
This technique shouldnʼt be a replacement for careful removal of blemishes by cloning, healing, patch tool or dodging & burning the skin – a technique I covered here a few months ago. This is a finishing technique and is best applied to skin that has already been retouched and colour corrected. Itʼs important to have good, clean skin before you start. However, as this effect should be kept subtle Iʼve decided to work on an image that has had very little retouch work other than basic blemish removal. This way I can be a little more heavy handed than I normally would and you can see the effect more clearly. This is also a great technique for getting rid of those fine little hairs on arms and legs.
1. Make a selection of the skin. There are many ways to make selections so just use your preferred method. For this tutorial I used the Quick Selection tool and the Refine Edge command to feather and contract my selection away from the edges of the body and face.
It’s useful to save your selection at this stage so you don’t have to re-create it. With your selection active go to Window>Paths and click on the ‘Make work path from selection’ button. Name your new path ‘Skin’.
2. With your selection active copy the skin onto its own layer by selecting Layer > Make Layer via Copy or by using the key command, Command+J (Mac) or Control+J (PC). You could also convert this new skin layer to a Smart Object if you wanted the option to keep everything editable from here.
3. Go to Filter > Gaussian Blur. In this image I used a radius of 7.2 to smooth out the skin completely and remove all the visible skin detail.
It’s not necessary but now would be an ideal opportunity to use your previously saved ‘skin’ selection to get rid of any blur overspill from the edges of your skin. Go to Window > Paths. Select your ‘skin’ path and click the ‘Load path as selection’ button. With your selection active again go back to your blurred skin layer in the layers palette and inverse your selection by going to Select > Inverse. This inverted selection will select everything except your skin. Hit backspace on your keyboard to delete the blur overspill.
4. To add some subtle texture into the blurred skin go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Select gaussian, uncheck monochromatic and set your radius to around 0.75 – 1.0. You shouldn’t really ever have to go over 1.0.
5. To blend the blurred skin with the ‘real’ skin open the Blending Options for the skin layer by going to Layer > Layer Styles > Blending Options or by pressing fx symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and selecting Blending Options.
6. Look for the Blend If section at the bottom of the dialog box and on the Underlying Layer’, holding Option (Mac) or Alt (PC), drag both the black and the white sliders. Holding the Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) key while dragging the sliders should split the sliders in two. Pull the black triangle towards the right, and the white triangle towards the left. These sliders represent the spread of lightness values from 0 (black) to 255 (white). Using Blend If in this way allows the important areas like the natural highlights and shadows of the skin to peek through the blurred layer, creating a more natural blend in the skin. In this example I split the white slider on ‘This Layer’ instead as it seemed to give me more natural results. Click OK.
7. Add a hide all layer mask to the skin layer by holding Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) while clicking the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers palette or going to Layer > Add Layer Mask > Hide Selection.
8. Using a soft white brush, paint on the layer mask to reveal the softened skin. As I said earlier, I’ve been heavy handed for the purpose of this tutorial and I’ve left the opacity at 100% for the ‘After’ image so you can get a better idea of the overall effect. However, even though the effect is far too strong at 100% opacity you can still see skin detail poking through the blurred layer and the skin looks a lot more even.
Before:
After:
Image courtesy of: Carlos Amoedo
by Alan
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