Smoothing skin - intermediate

One of the main ways people smooth skin on the internet is through the use of blur (in fact I have an earlier tutorial covering that). While its "ok" for something you need done quickly, it tends to be overdone and is personally one of the techniques I really hate used frequently (with over dodged eyes). So in this tutorial I will cover a different way of smoothing skin, one thats more like painting over it.

Here is the link to the stock image http://fetishfaerie-stock.deviantart.com/art/Wrapped-in-Lace-I-107514794

Step 1: First I cropped the veil slightly off the original. Then duplicate the background and use the clone stamp tool to remove minor blemishes/pimples/dots as below.



Step 2: Next I went into liquify and made the tip of the nose smaller, using the first tool on the list to drag it up. You can skip this part if you want. If you use it, make sure you don't over do it. The second tool takes you back to your original. Here is what I ended up with below.


Step 3: This is the tricky part, use the eyedropper tool on the left to select areas of the skin and paint that colour in a NEW BLANK LAYER above using a soft brush. Do this for the various different coloured areas, example, one layer for the right cheek, one area for the forehead. Pay careful attention to the areas with pores visible. If you think you have over done it, lower the opacity of the brushed layer. I had about 5 layers over all, left cheek, forehead, chin, right cheek, nose. I then created a new background layer with my adjustments by pressing ctrl+alt+shift+e. Turn this layer on and off to compare with the original layer, if you have gone too far, lower the opacity of this one. Here is mine below.


Step 4: Next select the patch tool from the left toolbar and use it to select areas left over that aren't smooth, example in the corner of her eye. Create a loop around this area using the patch tool (make sure source is selected up top) and drag the loop to a smooth area nearby. This will copy and smooth and smooth skin onto the original bumpy skin. Be careful not to select areas of high contrast such as eyelashes/hair as this will create dark smears when the smooth skin is dragged over. Make sure when you are done, you compare your layer to the painted one below. This is my patch layer below.



Step 5: Select your edited layers and merge them together to create a final edited image. Compare this to your background layer. Go back and readjust anything if you need to. Next select the dodge tool and lightly dodge the eyes, as well as using the clone stamp tool to remove the red veins. Don't go overboard!



Step 6: Finally look at the image carefully. Walk away and come back if you can. Ask a friend. Whats wrong with the image? In my opinion the skin is too pink and too dark and the veil is too cream so to fix this I added a hue/saturation adjustment layer, lowered the saturation a bit as well as increasing lightness. I painted over the veil with a soft white brush on a blank adjustment layer and set it to soft light.


Step 7: I still don't quite like the final image so I added a curve adjustment layer for more contrast. Then I selected the eyes, copied them to a new layer and selected high pass (set to soft light) to sharpen them. I also added a colour balance adjustment going towards blue to cool the overall image a little. This is the final below.


Original



My final comment on this after taking a lunch break and coming back is that my skin is probably too smooth. Professionals often will get the texture back from the original skin and paste it in so it resembles real skin a little more. I am not sure how to do this so I will leave the tutorial as it is. You can always lower the opacity of the edited layer to retain some of the original texture too.