In this tutorial i will show you a way that gives your portrait a very nice, smooth but still very natural look. Your photo wil have a real skin with lively skin, nice shadow and highlight, lively and sexy lips and eyes. It gives you the best and natural look that's possible.
Here is image before retouching:
We can see her skin is dull with many blemishes, and nothing special on her face. We'll be going to change it.
1. Open and duplicate your pic twice . First we will sharpen the skin. Choose Filter Sharpen Unsharp mask on layer copy 2 ( depending on the size and the sharpeness of your pic). With my stock i choose the value:
Then lower opacity to 30-70percents till you feel ok ( i choose 40percents because i want skin look smoother but if you want it sharper you can raise opacity)
2. Now choose layer copy (between background and layer copy 2). Apply Surface blur:
Add a layer mask, choose Hide all. Then use soft white brush paint on her skin avoiding the edges of face. You can use eraser to edit the edge that are softened unintetionally and unneccesarily.
3. Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E. Now we wil use Spot healing brush to remove blemishes. Press J key to open it. Choose Diameter, Hardness... depending on the largeness of blemishes. I choose brush with size 16, Hardness 7percents , Spacing 25percents to spot on blemishes . You should zoom out , 150 or 200percents to do it better. Here is my result after doing it:
4. Now we will do a step to make the skin look more natural. Apply Unsharp mask again:
If you want the skin look smooth you can choose small value or skip this step.
5. Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E. Add a new Hue/saturation layer with Saturation is -13. Then a new curves and brightness/contrast layer:
6. Then its to add shadow and highlight on the face. Create a new layer , use hard white brush to paint on her cheeks, the postion under the eyes, on the forhead and the chin like this:
Lower opacity to 20percents and then apply Gassian blur, 17 px. We have result:
Add a new layer again. Use hard brush with color thats fit skin to pain on her cheeks, like this: ( i choose c26049).
Then lower opacity to 20percents and apply Gassian blur, with 15 px.
This technique will work nicer on the face with high cheeks because then shadow and highlight will create a nice glow contrast.
7. Create a new layer and use soft brush with 6ee0f5 to paint on the center of the eyes, set this layer to Color 100percents :
8. New layer again, use soft brush, fa997f paint on her lips and set to Soft light 100percents .
9. Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E and lower opacity to 50percents . . Use Dodge Tool with highlight range, exposure 62percents paint on the lips to make a sexier and glossy look:
10. Create a new level layer :
Final result:
