Flawless Skin: Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is used by professionals and amateurs alike for retouching and repairing pictures. One of the most sought after skills is retouching flesh.

This method does not require using confusing vector masks, or Gaussian Blur: both of which destroy too much natural detail.

Use your lasso tool and draw around the areas of skin or surface that you desire to work with. Be sure you leave some distance between the area your working with and the lasso selection. When adding to your selection you can either select the box in the top left hand corner or hold down the shift key. After you have made your selection, copy and paste them into your same document.

Now turn off the original background leaving only your selection exposed. Select this layer in the layer pallet and zoom in enough to get a clean edge while you are working ( about 150% depending on your image size).

Select a medium size soft eraser brush and erase all the edges around the skin or desired work area. Allow the brush to leave a soft halo effect around the akin area with no background or hairline by barely brushing over the edge of it.

Lock this layer by clicking on the small checkerboard icon directly above the layer palette ( a small padlock icon will appear next to the layer name).

Select the smudge tool ( the little extended finger icon grouped with the blur and sharpen tools) Choose a medium size brush again and set your strength to about 60% ( again this depends on your picture size) In large areas use the smudge tool in quick, smooth, circular motions: blending the skin tones together. Around detail areas ( lips, eyes, nostrils, etc.) use soft gentle strokes, still blending but matching the contours of the face.

Now open up the Gaussian blur, you will need to apply just enough to blend the hammered effect together. Use the sliders and watch the preview until this is achieved. Be sure not to over blur the image.

Using your history palette take a snapshot of this correction and then undo the Gaussian Blur. (to take a snapshot choose the icon under the history palette that looks like a camera). You should now be looking at your smudge state again.

Select the history brush (paint brush with the arrow around it) and choose the blur snapshot in your history palette. ( there should be a check mark next to it). Use a medium to large brush and selectively brush on the blur, be sure to avoid any detail ares ( creases, lips, eyes nostrils, etc.)

Open up the Add Noise filter and add a very small amount ( about 3-4%) on uniform distribution, and apply this overall. This will create an illusion of texture in the skin and takes away the dreaded plastic look.

Now lets turn on the original layer ( click on the eye check box in the layer palette). We want to combine our layers with our original by changing the layer transparency of our smooth layer. For females set the transparency at about 60% and males about 45%. This allows some of the natural flaws, shadows and personality of the original back in.

When you are happy with your final product flatten your image and voila!