Tenacious Creations

 If you have ever looked a pictures in a magazine you will have no doubt noticed how smooth the models skin looks. Well this is by some sort of genetic accident, it has undoubtedly been photo manipulated to look that way. In this tutorial I will show you one way to achieve that effect.

 If you are following the whole series I will be using this same photograph on the right through out the series. Clicking on this image will take you to the full size picture that I got from www.sxc.hu.

 As you can see it is a good looking portrait in its one right, but never one you’d see in a magazine or as a head shot of an actor. I am sure if we could see the before being photo-shopped pictures or models in magazine we wouldn’t take for granted all the work that a graphic artist puts into making these pictures awesome.

 So let’s get started….

• First thing first, open the image you want to soften the skin on in photoshop. Now double click on the background layer. When the Layer dialog appears name it background and click OK

• Now we are going to make the skin perfect by removing all the blemishes. Use the Zoom tool to enlarge the face so it fills your entire work area.
• Next select the Spot Healing Brush . Change the mode to lighten(next to the brush size). In some cases lighten just won’t do it so you may have to change the mode back to normal. Set the brush size to be slightly larger than the blemish you are fixing, hover over the blemish and click. In my experience this method fixes about 95% of the blemishes I have run in too. No make sure your clean up the acne, scratches on the skin, and if you want the moles and birth marks.



• Now we need to make some duplicates of this layer. Type Ctrl+J 3 time to make three copies. Then turn off the visibility of your layers except the background copy 2 layer by clicking on the eye next to it. Your layers palette will look similar to the one below.
 


• Make your background copy 2 layer active by clicking on it. In the Layers palette switch the Blend mode from Normal to Darken. Then go to Filter < Blur < Gaussian Blur and apply a 40 pixel blur to the picture. Then hide this layer by clicking on the eye to the left of it.


 
 
 


• Now click the box to the left of background copy 3 to turn it back on and make this layer active. Change the Blend Mode to Lighten. Now again use the Gaussian Blur filter but this time to a 60 pixel blur.
• Turn on the layer Background copy 2 and lower its opacity to 40%. Then turn on your background copy layer. Now at this stage it really doesn’t look like much, but we are almost done.



 



• Make sure you have the layer background copy 3 active. Press Ctrl+E to merge this layer with background copy 2. Now click on the Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette.
• Press D on your keyboard and then X to make your foreground color black. Then using the Fill Tool click somewhere on the image. You see the whole image become unblurred. This because by filling with black we essentially masked out all of our blur effects.
• Now its time to bring back the blur over the areas of the skin where we want it. Press X to make your foreground color white. Now select the brush tool .Choose a soft brush that covers the area of skin you want to soften and paint in the softness. Be sure to leave detailed areas like the eyes,eye brows, lips, hair, and any other area you don’t want softened. Don’t worry if you see color blur around the edges where her clothing meets her skin. We’ll fix that in the next step.


 
 

 
 
 

 
 

• Now that you have your mask painted in over all the places of skin you want soften lower the Opacity of this layer to somewhere between 60 and 70% depending on your what you feel looks good. You can really see the effect the skin softening has on the image below.

 

 

 

Follow the entire glamour photo series by clicking on the links below:

1. The Eyes
2. The Teeth and Smile
3. The Hair
4. The Skin

Back to the Glamour Photo Tutorial

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