Skin Softening

Most people do not want photographs to capture every detail in their protraits. Wrinkles, laugh lines, crows' feet, blemishes, and the like can be very apparent in a photograph. People like to be photographed at their best. Call it vanity, but lots of people would prefer a little retouching to an all too accurate photographic reproduction.

Glamour photographers often retouch images so the skin is smooth. This works for youthful models. With older photographic subjects, you can apply some of the same techniques. You just have to be judicious in how much you soften skin, reduce wrinkles, and the like.

Move mouse over image to see the retouched version.

Here's a picture of my wife, Liliian. It was taken at Balmoral Castle in Scotland one sunny April day (sunny days are unusual during April in Scotland). Her first reaction was, "Look at the bags under my eyes!" If you move your mouse over the image, you can see the result of some skin softening and a few other retouches.

Layer palette for retouched image.

My favorite technique for retouching involves two duplicate layers. You can make a duplicate of the background layer by dragging it onto the New Layer icon next to the trash can icon or you can select the menu item from the Layer menu. If you have made some adjustments, then use something like Merge Visible (alt+ctrl+shift+n+e on the PC, option+cmd+shift+n+e on the Mac). Make a second duplicate.

The first duplicate is set to Darken blend mode. I applied a 40 pixel Gaussian blur in this example. Layer opacity was set to 65%.

A duplicate layer set to Darken blend mode and 65% opacity.

There is some improvement. We'll get more by setting the second duplicate layer to Lighten blend mode with a 40 pixel Gaussian Blur and 100% opacity.

A second duplicate layer is set to Lighten blend. A 40 pixel Gaussian Blur. 100% opacity.

The effect of the Lighten + Blur layer is too drastic. My preference is to place both layers inside a Layer Group (Photoshop CS2; Layer Set in Photoshop CS). That way I can control the entire skin softening effect by adjusting the Layer Group opacity. With Pre-Photoshop CS/CS2, you could adjust the opacity of the Lighten + Blur layer.

In this case, I set the opacity for the Layer Group to 50%.

Using a Layer Group/Set offers another advantage. If you look back at the Layer palette image, you will notice that I added a Layer Mask. I wanted to smooth just the skin, not the hair, eyes, lips, teeth, or background. So I added a Reveal All layer mask and used the Brush tool with Black as the foreground color to quickly paint the mask. (I am no painter, and it took me just a minute or two. I used an opacity of 35% and just painted a few quick strokes where I wanted to keep softening away from the image.

The skin has been softened.

Want proof how quick and rough the mask can be? Here's the mask:

Layer mask used to restrict softening to skin.

Here's the effect of the Darken + Blur and Lighten + Blur layers:

Skin softening effect with the Background layer invisible.

After I softened the skin, I decided a few more quick retouches would improve the image. I decided to attack wrinkles and laugh lines first. Then the bags under the eyes. The last retouch would be the shiny glare on a few of the teeth.

I removed the wrinkles and laugh lines with a combinatin of the Healing Brush and the Patch tool. I made a Merge Visible duplicate layer at that point and made my retouches on that layer. (I ALWAYS work non-destructively wiht my images by using layers.)

I decided that I was going to place all of the retouches inside a Photoshop CS2 Layer Group. It was OK to get aggressive with the Healing Brush and Patch tools. If the skin got too smooth, I could dial back the overall opacity for the retouch later.

There's a fine line in retouching people. You want to remove distracting features, but you do not want to draw attention to the retouch. Making people appear decades younger is one way to advertise the image was retouched. Allowing some of the original skin texture, wrinkles, etc. to peek through the retouch leaves people with the impression that the image was not retouched.

Wrinkles are removed with the Healing Brush and Patch tools on a duplicate layer.

The bags under the eyes and crows' feet required a little more precision with the Healing Brush tool. I used an opacity of 65% to allow some of the original texture to blend through the retouch.

The Opacity for the layer to remove eye bags and crows' feet was 65%.

While I was fixing the bags under the eyes and the crows' feet, I also used the Healing Brush to quickly dab away tiny specular highlights near the bottom of each iris. Two highlights quickly tells the tale that flash was used (in this case, fill flash).

To reduce the specular highlights on the teeth, I made a duplicate of the layer I used to fix the eyes. Raising the opacity past 65% for that layer would also affect the bags under the eyes unless I used a layer mask to keep the changes limited to the teeth. You will see a Hide All layer mask (i.e., a mask filled with black) attached to the layer on the Layers palette. I brushed over the mask with white to allow the changes to affect only the teeth and set Opacity to 100% for the layer.

For each tooth, I used the Eyedropper tool to sample its color. Then I used the brush tool at 100% opacity to brush over the tiny specular highlights. I increased image magnification to 500% temporarily to make it easier to brush out the highlights.

Each tooth was sampled with the Eyedropper tool and the highlights were brushed out.

The final retouch was to increase the contrast just a very minor amount. I added a Levels adjustment layer but made no change to Levels. If all you want to do is apply a self-blend to an image, you can add an adjustment layer and then makle no adjustment. You gat a much smaller file than you would by creating a merged layer. In this case, I set the Blend mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 25%.

Soft Light blend at 25% adds just a smidge of contrast.

The final step was to place the entire retouch inside a Photoshop CS2 Layer Group and reduce the opacity to 75%. This allows some of the original skin texture, a hint of the wrinkles, and even some of the glare on the teeth to reemerge. Years were shaved off my wife's portrait but the final result does not look artifical.

Look for more retouching tips in future Learning Galleries.

Cheers!