Photoshop Tutorial: Quick Skin Smoothing

**I'll get back to fixing broken photo links later (sorry, the switchover from website to blog created chaos) because right now I have a fun tutorial on quick skin smoothing in photoshop.**

I tried out a new skin smoothing plug in called Portraiture by Imagnomic recently.  I wasn't anymore impressed with the final product than what I already do, BUT I was exceptionally impressed with the speed. Instead of having to go in and "paint" on the effect, it detected skin tones and did it all by itself, saving me a good couple minutes of work.

With my hubby going back to grad school, I can't afford any new photo toys for a long time.  But I can make my own hack, and it worked so well I'm sharing it with all of you!  This is little H is one of his first weeks of life.  He had a bad case of baby acne I was trying to capture, so that makes it a perfect candidate to show you how this works!

 #1.  Open up your file.  Here's mine SOOC (straight out of camera).  Run your favorite skin smoothing action.  Mine is Pro Retouch from Totally Rad Actions.  I've made some of my own tweaks to it, but it's still a great product as it is.  If you're a cheapskate (like I normally am), I believe there's a good, FREE one at CoffeeShop actions.

#2.  Don't worry about messing with the mask yet.  Just leave it all as is.

#3.  Select your original image.  Next, in your menu options, go to select then color range.

 #4.  Choose the eyedropper with the + symbol next to it, and click on different skin tones until that preview mask on the box has most of the skin selected.

 #5 Your image will now have the "marching ants" around the selected color range.  This is exactly what you want.

 #6.  Choose an adjustment layer.  Any will work, I always go for curves.  You do not need to make any adjustments.  This is just so your color range selection will become a layer mask.

 #7.  Drag the layer mask on your curves layer (the one with your skin tones selected) and place it on top of your blank skin smoother action.

#8.  A prompt box will pop up asking if you want to replace the layer mask.  Choose yes!

#9.  You can now delete the curves layer if you want (I like things ocd and clean, so I do).  The mask will apply the smoother to all the skin tones you selected.  It will need a bit of fine tuning, but still much faster than painting it on yourself!

Feel free to pin or link to this article, but do not replicate it in whole or claim it as your own!