Hot Stuff
Weekly Contest - Fanurio Software
3 Winners Selected
The Big Picture Magazine - FREE
Real-world solutions to design challenges
Get Creative Videocast
New every week. Watch what's important to you.
Photoshop How-To: Super-Smooth Skin
Looking for that perfectly flawless skin? Don't pick up the Oil of Olay just yet. Let Photoshop give you the dewy complexion you've always wanted.
Written by Pete Bauer on March 16, 2004
Related Articles
Related Reading
Here's a technique for producing that absolutely, perfectly, flawlessly smooth skin. It's not appropriate for all images, but when you need perfect skin, give this trick a try.
Photoshop's Healing Brush copies texture. When we want perfect skin, we want smooth skin. What better tool to produce perfectly smooth skin than the Healing Brush? We simply need to give it some "smooth" texture from which to copy.
- Open your image. (We're using PhotoSpin's image #0370033 for this example.)
- Add a new layer.
- In an area away from skin you're going to smooth, drag a rectangular selection. If there's room, make the selection as large as the area of skin you're going to smooth.
- Fill this selection with color, any color. (What is the texture of an area filled with a solid color? Smooth!)
- Deselect.
- Select the Healing Brush in the Toolbox.
- In the Options Bar, check the box "Use All Layers." Do not select the Aligned option.
- In the Layers palette, make the image layer active.
- Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) in the center of the solid color area.
- Working from the center of the skin area you're correcting, paint with the Healing Brush. Follow the contours of the face. Avoid areas of critical detail, such as eyes, eyebrows, and lips.
- When finished, delete the upper layer.
Compare the before (upper) and after (lower) images. Remember that you can use the History Brush to restore some detail. (And reducing the opacity of the History Brush enables you to compromise between smooth and detailed.)
TIPS
- If the image on which you're working doesn't have a lot of extra room for that rectangular selection, simply use Image> Canvas Size. Expand the canvas to 200%, adding canvas to one side or the other, filling with white. You then don't need to add the new layer, just use the black area of the canvas as the source for the Healing Brush. After fixing the skin, crop or use Canvas Size to restore the original size.
- Since we generally make lots of short strokes with the Healing Brush, it's a good idea to take snapshots in the History palette regularly as you work.
Share:
Login
Login to post a comment. Not a member? Sign up here
Forgot your password?
Retouch
Useless results!
All Texture Lost
Smoothing is one thing. Here you have eliminated all texture. This is akin to using a Gaussian Blur of about 3.5. I have used Photoshop since 1990 and I usually find your articles useful. This one is way off the mark, however.
smoothing face
It is a super idea but its so blurry. I understand about the history brush, but would it help the blurriness and glow around the edges of face? sincerely, Jan
OK, OK!
I agree that the results don't look quite as nice as I'd hoped. It is interesting that this article came to us from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), sponsors of PhotoshopWorld, Their stuff is usually reliable, so not sure what happened here.
Pamela Pfiffner, editor in chief
is it me?
or does the finished article look truly dreadful?
This is ok, but better ways to do it...
Too many steps! Try this:
1) Gaussian Blur @ about 4 (will depend on your file size)
2) Take snapshot
3) Edit>Undo Blur
4) Ctrl/CMD Y (history brush)
5) Make snapshot (blurred state)active
6) Set opacity of brush to approx 20%
7) Simply paint, avoiding eyes & lips--where ever you paint will be soft. Want it softer? Paint more or change opacity.
Steve Bohne
Poor results
This technique provides poor results for skin tones, however, there may be other applications better suited than "smoothing skin" for this technique.
Wrong timing?
Maybe it's an April Fool that went in too early...
What A Waste of Time
First of all, the retouched photo in your article looks awful. Why bother with the Healing Brush if the results look like you just Blurred the heck out of the image.
Second, I followed your instructions step by step, and my image looked worse than awful. Perhaps your tutorial needs some refinement.
A Photoshop user since 1995.
What a mess
If that's a good example of 'after' this technique I don't think I'll bother using it. Looks like badly applied make-up. Let's see something that actually looks good.