Portrait retouching: skin smoothing in Photoshop

In order to make skin in portraits appear smooth, I have been learning skin painting using “sample and paint” method in Photoshop. It is, basically, sampling the colour and painting a neighbouring skin area repeatedly, while preserving the texture detail of the original image.

Here is a step-by step-procedure:

1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Make a new layer (Shift-Option-Command-N). Let’s refer to it as Skin Painting Layer. We will be painting on this layer.
3. Above the Skin Painting Layer, make another layer (Shift-Option-Command-N). Let’s refer to it as the Texture Layer, since it will be used to add texture to the areas of the Skin Painting Layer that will be re-painted.
4. Create “Stamp visible” on the Texture Layer (Shift-Option-Command-E).
5. Change the blending mode of the Texture Layer from Normal to Overlay.
6. Desaturate the Texture Layer (Shift-Command-U or select Image > Adjustments > Desaturate from the top menu bar) because we only need to add texture to the Skin Painting Layer, not the colour.
7. Make the Texture Layer into high-pass layer, which will enable extracting the details. From the top menu bar, select Filter > Other> High Pass.
8. Select the Radius value of around 4 pixels. This can and should be adjusted later, when the Skin Painting Layer has some painting done. The goal is to match the texture of the painted-in skin areas match the texture of the rest of the skin.
9. Clip Texture Layer ayer to the underlying layer (Skin Painting Layer), making it visible only where the underlying layer is visible. Right-click the Texture Layer and select “Create clipping mask“. The shortcut is Option-Command-G. This will add the texture from the original image only to the areas of the Skin Painting Layer that have been re-painted.
10. Switch to the Skin Painting Layer by clicking on it.
11. Select a brush tool and choose a soft round brush.
12. With a brush tool selected (the shortcut is “B“), hold Option key and click the skin area to sample the colour. Release Option key and paint the neighbouring skin area (that needs smoothing) in a couple of short strokes. Repeat the sampling and painting procedure everywhere, where skin smoothing is required. I find it convenient to use the brush size that is approximately equal to the area that is being retouched (e.g. large for the forehead, smaller for the eyes, etc.) Other brush settings are as follows:
    1. Mode: Normal.
    2. Flow: approximately 10%. This low flow value makes each bush stroke add only a very subtle effect, making the whole process more controllable (it is very easy to inadvertently go overboard with retouching and ruin the image).

Note: I am using a Wacom Intuos Tablet; it would be very inconvenient to do this type of retouching using a mouse.

Recently, I have been using a combination of this technique and some high-level retouching using Portrait Pro plug-in, which I apply on a separate layer, with a layer mask that I can paint on to control where the effects of the plug-in are visible. Generally, I find that in order to avoid a cookie-cutter, “filtered” look, I need to touch nearly every part of the photo with a brush at some point during post-processing. Of course, this is not feasible for larger photo sets, but optimizing the workflow is a whole other story – something that I constantly keep in mind nowadays.