Flawless Flesh Part 2:
Skin Repair & Reconstruction in Adobe Photoshop:

Step 4

Next, open up Gaussian blur, you need to apply a moderate amount that should be just enough to blend the hammered effect together smoothly without over blurring the image. Use the sliders and watch the preview until this is achieved and then apply the correction overall. Using your history palette, take a snapshot of this correction and then undo the Gaussian Blur returning you to your previous ‘smudged’ state. Select the history brush and choose the blur snapshot in your history palette by clicking the checkbox next to it. Use a medium to large brush and gently brush on the blur selectively only in large open areas taking care to avoid any detail parts like creases, eyes, lips etc.

Step 5

Open up the Add Noise filter and a very small amount – 2% on uniform distribution and then apply this overall. This helps create the illusion of texture in the skin and avoids the pancake makeup look. Finally, turn your original layer back on by clicking its eye checkbox in the layer palette. At this point you want to blend the corrections you have done back into the original. You do this by altering the layer transparency of the smooth correction. You can alter this at will to achieve your desired effect and the amount of smoothing you want. Typically, a female subject would usually be set at around 65% transparency whereas a male would be less, say 45-50%. By doing this you allow some of the natural flaws and shadows of the original back into the image ensuring a very natural end result indeed. When you are happy with this blend, flatten your image and your all done!

Your result should look something like this:

Tutorial written By Phil Calam