How To Soften Skin in Photoshop: A Tutorial

Hey guys, I'm back with another editing tutorial (well, more like a tip) in Photoshop. I hope you all liked my previous tutorial on how to sharpen your images. In this tutorial, I want to share how I retouch and soften skin in Photoshop. Now, don't get me wrong though, I'm not a Photoshop expert nor am I claiming to be one. All these techniques and tips I'm sharing here I've also learned from various sources may it be from other people or online. Consider all these my version of "Photoshop for Dummies" since I myself am still a dummy in the shop. Enough of the talk and let's start.

There's a lot of ways you can soften skin in Photoshop. In Youtube alone there are a gazillion tutorials on this you just have to take your pick. The most common way I guess is blurring out the skin and masking the blemishes, etc. But then I realized that most of these stuff are too complicated for me not to mention a lot of work.

So I started looking for easier ways to do this process and lo and behold I found two plug-ins perfect for the job. Plug-ins are easier to use since all you need to do is just pick and click and the plug-in will do the rest. Here they are:

1. Topaz Labs
2. Portraiture

I prefer doing my basic retouching first before using the plug-in. This way, I can maximize the effect of the plug-in. But of course you can do whatever you want first it's all up to you. And after rendering either of the plug-in effects, I prefer to put a layer mask on the rendered layer to have control on the areas that I only want the plug-in to take effect. Here's the run down on the processes:

For Topaz Labs:

1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Do your basic retouching.
3. When done, merge all layers by pressing CTRL E in PC. Once merged, make a duplicate layer by pressing CTRL J.
4. Make sure you have chosen the duplicate layer. Go to Filter then Topaz Labs and choose Topaz Clean. 
5. On the presets, choose SkinEven and press OK. I prefer to just leave the settings on default. Take note that the softening will effect the entire image not only the skin.
6. Once the plug-in has already rendered the effect, go to Layer then Layer Mask and choose Hide All.
7. Now, choose the Brush tool and make sure that your foreground is white. You can change this by pressing X on the keyboard. Once selected, start painting the areas that you only want to soften. If the effect is too strong for your taste you can adjust the opacity. Personally, I prefer 95%-100% opacity.
8. When satisfied, merge all layers by pressing CTRL E and you're done.

Before Topaz Labs:

After Topaz Labs:


Portraiture is actually the plug-in that I use most often on my images. I find the effect more subtle compared to Topaz yet it still does a very good job in softening the skin. Plus, Portraiture does not affect the entire image but only the skin and/or the areas that has the same tone as the skin - so you may opt not to do the layer mask anymore.

For Portraiture:

1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Do you basic retouching.
3. When done, merge all layers by pressing CTRL E in PC. Once merged, make a duplicate layer by pressing CTRL J.
4. Make sure you have chosen the duplicate layer. Go to Filter then Imagenomic and choose Portraiture.
5. Once on the plug-in menu just wait until the preview is 100% complete then press OK. I prefer to leave all the values on default.
6. After the plug-in has completely rendered the effect, you can choose to adjust the affected areas by adding a layer mask or adjust the opacity to your liking. Most of the time I just leave it as it is.
7. Once satisfied, merge all layers by pressing CTRL E and you're done

Before Portraiture:

After Portraiture:

Now that we have run through with how to use the plug-ins, here's how you can get them. But first let me apologize that I can only provide a direct link to the Portraiture plug-in and not the Topaz Labs since the latter contains 217MB full of data and I am too lazy to wait for it to upload.

So to download the Portraiture plug-in, just click HERE. For the Topaz Labs plug-in, you can download the torrent file HERE. Just make sure that you already have bittorrent app installed in your PC to download it. If not you can get one HERE. For those who do not know how to install plug-ins in Photoshop there's a very helpful video HERE.

That's all for today folks. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any comments and suggestions hit them on the comments section below. For violent reactions, you can kiss my sweet round...

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