Natural Skin Smoothing in Photoshop

Natural Skin Smoothing in Photoshop

Professional beauty retouching demands techniques that smooth skin while preserving natural texture. This advanced method combines inverted layers with Vivid Light blend mode to create seamless skin enhancement without the artificial "plastic" look common in over-processed images.

The technique works by canceling out layer information through inversion, then selectively applying blur and sharpening filters to reconstruct realistic skin texture while eliminating blemishes and color irregularities.

Watch the Video

Video by Lee Varis. Any links or downloads mentioned by the creator are available only on YouTube

Practical Tips

Follow these key steps to master this counterintuitive skin smoothing approach:

  • Start with High Pass radius around 15-16 pixels to target skin blotchiness, ignoring what happens to eyes and other features
  • Set Gaussian Blur radius to roughly half your High Pass value, then adjust down until fine skin texture becomes visible
  • Use black layer mask with white brush painting to selectively reveal the smoothing effect only where needed
  • Focus on evening out color variations and subtle blemishes rather than major skin reconstruction
  • Monitor texture carefully to avoid the artificial plastic appearance that ruins natural-looking results

Explore more photo enhancement techniques and creative effects to expand your editing skills:

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