Retouching Skin
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Retouching is a wonderful thing to learn in Photoshop - it's used quite frequently and has good outcomes. Though there are several ways to retouch a photo, I'll demonstrate one way of retouching skin to achieve this outcome:
(click to see full)
Step 1
Open the photo that you'd like to retouch. I'll use this picture:
(click to see full)
Step 2
Use the Clone Stamp Tool to get rid of any blemishes/unwanted things.
Select a small brush. Hold down 'Alt' and click on an area you'd like to duplicate (ex. clean skin) and then release Alt and click on an area that you'd like to have fixed (ex. a blemish). For the best results, click on clean skin around the blemish so that the lighting's the same/similar. In this example, I got rid of my zits, some unwanted make-up and eyebrow:
(click to see full)
Step 3
Next, I'll adjust the lighting to make the photo look better. Go to Image » Adjustments » Brightness/Contrast.
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I'm making the brightness '23' and the contrast '12,' but the settings totally depend on the photo. Adjust them accordingly.
After that, I get this:
(click to see full)
Step 4
Now, save, close, and re-open. Make sure that you don't resize the image. I'll tell you why in a later step.
Once you've re-opened, go to Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur. You should have a preview of your image; if not, tick the 'preview'
box.
Select a small radius; I have '1' for mine. The skin will stay with this same blurriness, so make sure that it looks realistic!
(click to see full)
Step 5
Now select the eraser tool and tick 'Erase to History' (this is not optional if you resized the image).
Brush over all of the areas except for the skin: the eyes, hair, outline of the nose, etc. And you're finished! Here's the resulting product:
(click to see full)
I hope that this tutorial was useful to you! If you still need help, feel free to contact me here.