[j sotelo]

I tried a gaussian blur, healingg, auto eye fx, and masking approach to smooth skin. I would like some input, if most people like it I'll make a tutorial.

[Trashcan]

While a little much in most cases (the skin looks a bit too perfect), I think it worked great for this particular picture. She almost has a heavenly glow to her skin

[HIMUPNORTH]

It only looks too perfect because you have a reference point. On it's own you would have just thought what a great complexion this pretty girl has. Good job! Interested in how you smoothed out the hair so tutorial would be a good idea.

[orangepeel]

Originally Posted by HIMUPNORTH

so tutorial would be a good idea.

found a good one here: -

Lunacore Photoshop Training - Smooth Skin tutorial (part 1/2)

[Charlotte]

Well spotted OP, that tutorial looks excellent. I too have had better, more natural looking results on skin with median blur rather than gaussian blur, as outlined in that tutorial.

J, your illustration here does look a little artificial, and very glowy + makes the eyes too soft. However, I would be interested to see your workflow here, and we could always just tone down the effect where we wanted to, couldn't we. Thanks for showing what you came up with here

[Rob Barron]

Originally Posted by HIMUPNORTH

It only looks too perfect because you have a reference point. On it's own you would have just thought what a great complexion this pretty girl has. Good job! Interested in how you smoothed out the hair so tutorial would be a good idea.

I can't agree there, we DO have a reference point when just seeing one picture because we all know what a person looks like, what skin looks like and so forth. This level of processing of the skin does not leave her looking like any girl I have ever seen, however good their complexion has been. The hair adds to the overall feeling for me that the picture is simply out of focus as there is very little detail left, after all, even the ear-ring is slightly blurred!

I am not saying that the tutorial shouldn't be done, it would be very useful for some people so definitely worth doing. I think as people learn the methods used, they will then apply them at different levels according to their own taste and what kind of image they want to portray. So for me not liking it, that is nothing more than my own taste and doesn't make other people's different tastes invalid. For me, if I am honest, they look like plastic surgery gone mad as the skin looks more like a robot or something. But the exact same technique applied to perhaps a lesser extent would likely result in a picture that i personally prefer.

That's the great thing about using PS and others, we can learn the techniques and then apply them according to our own tastes, feelings, aims and so forth.

Cheers,
Rob

[skipper954]

One of the major problems with skin in the tendency to do too much. I agree that this is a bit over the norm, even for a glamour shot.

Much like all of the methods to convert to mono, there are many methods to smooth the skin, some easy, some very complex.

But with all, too much is too much. So use the opacity slider to back off, or go back to the layer and lessen the effect.

And yes, a tut would be good.

I personally have been using in cs2 the healing brush, then the noise reduction filter with high strength, high color noise reduction and the other settings low. That combined with masks and sharpening with masks works well for me. (so far)

skip

[nichpr]

Speaking for those of us still looking for our own method - I would like to see your tutorial.

- Paul