How To Smooth Skin In Photoshop

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If you are a photographer, a graphic designer, or simply someone who loves editing photos, you’ve probably come across the need to smooth skin in Photoshop. It’s a skill that can be particularly useful when you’re working on portrait photography. In this blog post, we’ll be sharing a step-by-step process on how you can achieve that perfect skin smoothness using Photoshop.

Tools Needed

Primarily, we will be using two main tools from the Photoshop toolset:

  • Spot Healing Brush Tool: This tool allows you to easily remove spots or blemishes.
  • Frequency Separation: This is a technique that lets you edit the texture and color of the skin separately, resulting in a more natural effect.

Step 1: Spot Healing

The first step in our skin-smoothing process is to use the Spot Healing Brush Tool to get rid of any blemishes on the skin. You can do this by following these steps:

  1. Select the Spot Healing Brush Tool from the toolbar.
  2. Choose the Content-Aware type in the options bar.
  3. Brush over the blemishes you want to remove.

Step 2: Frequency Separation

After removing the blemishes, the next step is to smooth the skin while keeping its texture. We do this through frequency separation. Here’s how:

  • Duplicate your background layer twice. You can do this by selecting Layer > Duplicate Layer.
  • Name the first duplicate layer as ‘Low Frequency’ and the second one as ‘High Frequency’.
  • Select the ‘Low Frequency’ layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to a value that blurs the skin details.
  • Select the ‘High Frequency’ layer, go to Image > Apply Image, and enter the following settings: 
    Layer: Low Frequency
Blending: Subtract
Scale: 2
Offset: 128
  • Then change the blending mode of the ‘High Frequency’ layer to Linear Light.

Step 3: Smoothing the Skin

Now that we’ve separated the color and texture, we can smooth the skin.

  • Select the ‘Low Frequency’ layer.
  • Choose the Mixer Brush Tool.
  • Then start brushing over the skin to smooth it out.

And voila! You’ve achieved a more natural, professional-looking skin smoothing effect using Photoshop! Remember, the key is to maintain a balance, don’t over-smooth the skin as it might end up looking unnatural.

Conclusion

There you have it, a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to smooth skin in Photoshop. With a little practice, you’ll be able to perfect this technique and achieve stunning results in your photo editing projects. Happy editing!