Skin editing in Photoshop in Russian. Fundamentals of face retouching and useful cheat sheets for a photographer - retoucher

How to make the skin perfect, tint the lips, add a blush, make the eyes shine? Makeup in Photoshop.

In this tutorial, you will learn how you can completely change the face of a girl using simple Photoshop techniques. Try to create the perfect female portrait. The face will look a little unnatural, something between a plastic girl, a cartoon character, or a picture from a glamor magazine.

For work, you need the right image.

First of all, let's remove the girl's hair. To do this, use the tool Clone Stamp Tool (Stamp).

Settings for stamp tool:

Select the Stamp Tool, hold down the Alt key, click on the girl's hat, release Alt and draw the hair with the stamp.

Remove the scarf in the same way.

To darken a strand of hair, use the tool Burn tool (Dimmer).

Here are the settings for Burn tool (Dimmer).

To lighten the whites of the eyes, you can use the Spot Healing Brush Tool (Spot Healing Brush). This will make the eyes brighter.

Make a duplicate of the main layer

In the duplicate layer, carefully erase the following parts of the photo with an eraser.

Using the Spot Healing Brush Tool, remove the dots on the girl's face. (In this image, they are almost invisible, but in real photographs there are always many small dots - pimples, freckles. The skin of the face needs to be cleaned of such errors.)

Apply a filter to the duplicate layer. Filter (Filter)> Blur (Blur)> Gaussian blur (Gaussian Blur)

Filter settings:

Change the transparency of this layer to 79% – Opacity (Opacity) on the layers panel.

Everything should look something like this, if you turn off the main layer

At the top of the blurry duplicate layer, clean up the blurry hairs a little with the Eraser Tool (Eraser).

To make the eyes brighter and more expressive, darken the pupils and edges of the iris with the Burn tool (Dimmer)

And lighten the middle of the iris with the Dodge Tool (Clarifier) ​​with the following settings:

Tool Burn tool (Dimmer) you can emphasize the eyebrows, the diameter in the tool settings, choose proportional to the width of the eyebrows, so as not to affect the skin of the face.

Result:

The girl we work with is very nice, but you can make her lips better. To do this, use another photography.

Select the lip area with any selection tool (approximately possible) and paste it into a new layer of the main document. Remove everything superfluous from this layer with a hard rubber band, leaving only the lips.

Their shape can be changed. To change the shape of the lips, apply Edit (Editing)> Transform (Transformation)> Warp (Deformation) in the layer with lips and make the following changes:

With the tool Spot Healing Brush Tool (Spot Healing Brush) you can remove minor imperfections.

To "touch up" the lips, create a new layer above the lips layer, select the color #f307b3 and carefully paint over the area of ​​the lips with a brush.

For this layer, in the layers panel, set the blending mode to Linear burn (Linear dimmer). With a soft rubber band with Opacity (Opacity) about 50%, correct the color fill in the corners of the lips.

To make the eyes brighter, create highlights in the eyes.

Set the foreground color to white. Tool RectangleTool (Rectangle) draw 4 rectangles.

Select all 4 rectangle layers and merge them (CTRL+E). Apply for this layer Edit (Editing)> Transform (Transformation)> Distort (Distortion) to get such a figure.

Press CTRL+T and resize and reposition the shape as shown.

Reduce Opacity (Opacity) layer up to 78%. Duplicate this layer and move the highlight to the other eye.

To add some blush to the cheeks create a new layer. Choose a soft brush with a large diameter of 150-200px, Opacity (Opacity) – 11%, set the color to # e4431e and make a few strokes on the cheeks. You can choose another color.

Now you can draw eyelashes.

Create a new layer. Take Brush tool (Brush) 1px in size and draw eyelashes above the right eye. Then make a duplicate of this layer, reflect horizontally (Edit (Editing)> Transform (Transformation)> Flip horizontally (Flip horizontally)) and drag the eyelashes to the left eye.

Also draw thicker bottom lashes.

(If you can’t do anything with drawing eyelashes, look at the lesson using ready-made brushes or. This will make your work much easier)

Finally, use the Dodge Tool (Clarifier) ​​to emphasize the fur on the hat.

With this tutorial, you can learn how to edit your photos, create a glamorous look, make your face perfect.


Beauty and youth are always attractive, but sometimes Photoshop emphasizes it and makes the portrait stylish. And the "secrets of beauty" will help eliminate the flaws in appearance.

The article contains a description of not the entire retouching process. Only the main points are described that will remove all skin imperfections. Tone and light and shadow correction will remain behind the scenes. These are the topics of separate lessons.

We will process this photo:


We will do the retouching. Let's start by making two copies of the main layer.


Blur layer Layer 1 using the filter Gaussian blur (Gaussian blur). Set the value to 2.5 pixels. The blur radius should be chosen in the range from 2 to 11 px. The choice depends on how close-up the shot is. Very close-up portraits should be set to 9-11px. Photos of models taken not too close-up should be blurred with a radius of 2 to 4 px.



To the Layer 1 copy layer, you can apply a filter High pass (Color contrast) with a value equal to that with which we blurred the previous layer, but in this case we will go the other way.
Apply to layer Layer 1 copy Image-> Apply Image (Image – External channel). In the settings, specify Layer 1 as the source and check the Invert box. Set the blending mode to Add (Adding), and in Scale (Scale) set the value to 2.



Click OK and change the blending mode of Layer 1 copy to Linear Light (Linear light). The picture will return to its original form. This is what we need. The trick is that we now have two layers: texture and texture of the skin on one, and colors and tones on the second. Now you can edit it independently.



Edit Let's start with the skin texture first.
In order to clearly see the texture of the skin, change the blending mode of Layer 1 copy back to Normal (Normal). Add an adjustment layer on top. Levels (Levels). We pull the extreme sliders to the middle. This will help you see the terrain more clearly. To eliminate defects, you can use any method. The easiest way to use Healing brush (Healing brush). The type of brush is recommended to be flat and slightly tilted to the side. This will give you smoother transitions.



Once you've finished editing the Layer 1 copy, you can turn off its visibility and start editing the skin itself on Layer 1. The Adjustment Levels can be removed. They won't be useful anymore.
The skin can be edited using Clone Stamp Tool (Stamp). The size of the brush should be changed depending on the size of the area being edited, but its diameter should be kept in proportion to 1/3 of the area being edited. The hardness of the brush should be 0%. Transparency is also not great, around 21%.
For editing, you need to create an empty layer above the blurred skin layer. The brush should work in Normal mode and All layers (All layers).



How to edit large flaws with the tool Clone Stamp Tool (Stamp)? Set the stamp settings as described above. If the skin has highlights or overexposure in some places, then you just need to take areas from where there is similar skin and transfer them to damaged areas. If during the process of transferring skin areas you accidentally get on clothes or crawl out of the edges of the body, you do not need to worry. Work is carried out on a separate layer. You can always take a grater and wipe the failed area or even start all over again. Also, working on a separate layer makes it possible to change the transparency of the changes being made.

When you mention retouching, people often think of the impossibly flawless haute couture models and cover girls they see in magazines. In photographs of this kind, there is no need to achieve realism. Instead, photographers try to make the impossible possible. Flawless leather is allowed, but at the same time, it should not look like plastic. Often the task is to create a similar effect on a person who is not even close to the ideal. You must know how to completely restore the skin, if the task at hand calls you to do so. Of course, today nothing is impossible.
In this example, we'll be working with a snapshot of this attractive woman in her fifties.

It's no wonder that in our youth-obsessed culture, photographers are being asked to strip three decades of writers, musicians, actors, and actresses off their faces. Because movies and television are still low-definition, people often can't tell how old their favorite idols are. I'm not going to expose anyone here, so we're just going to completely reconstruct this woman's skin.

Result:

Step 1. As usual, we start by creating a new layer. In this case, we will duplicate the background image by dragging it onto the thumbnail. creating a new layer (createnewlayer) in the layers palette. Our task is to blur this copy as a base for the new skin, so let's rename the layer (double click on the name of the copy of the layer) and name it Blur on the surface (Surface Blur).

Select Filter - Blur - Surface Blur (filter- Blur- Surface Blur).

Filter Surface blur (surfaceblur) appears in the version of Photoshop CS2, it is especially often used in such operations. This blur preserves the transitional edges, but at the same time controls the creation of a very smooth blur. Slider Radius (Radius) controls the intensity of the blur, and the slider Threshold (Threshold) sets how sharp the image should remain. Unlike other blur filters, high setting Threshold (Threshold) gives a greater blur effect. You need to adjust the sliders so that absolutely all wrinkles and skin texture are smoothed out, leaving the main elements untouched.

Note: users of CS versions can use the filter Median (Median) (Filter - Noise - Median (filter - noise - Median). This filter only has one slider, but you can get a similar result, although not as good a smoothing effect.

Step 2 We need to hide this blurry layer. layer mask (layermask). Press and hold the Option/Alt key and click on the icon Layer mask (layermask) at the bottom of the layers palette.

This action will create a black layer mask and hide the blurry layer, revealing the original image.
Now just paint layer mask (layermask) white to cover those areas of the skin that you want to smooth out.

The area you are working on may be barely visible if you paint over everything. You can turn off the visibility of the background layer to see if there are any gaps left. To do this, click on the eye icon next to the thumbnail of the background (background) layer in the layers palette.

Carefully bypass those areas that need to be preserved while painting over "bad" skin - eyes, lips, etc. At this point, you should have something that looks like the image below:

Step 3 Skin will be smooth, but colors and tones may appear patchy. To fix this, create a new layer, but to do this, hold down the Option / Alt key and click on the create icon new layer (newlayer), to bring up a dialog box with options new layer (newlayer).

Note. translator: if after the perfect manipulations you did not open a window, like the author, try to go the following way: Layer - New - Layer ( layer - New - layer )

Check the box next to Use the previous layer to create a clipping mask (Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask).

This will allow the previous layer's mask to control the new layer being painted.
Take a big soft brush and swatch the colors from the blurred skin (Option/Alt + click to turn the cursor into Pipette (eye dropper) and take a color sample) and paint very low opacity (opacity), to gradually smooth out colors and tones.

At this stage, you need to restore some hints of the old skin. Select the blurred layer by clicking on its thumbnail in the layers palette. Move Slider opacity (opacity) slightly to the left to reveal the old skin.

Step 4 Now we need to create layers Lightening (Dodge) and Darkening (Burn) and highlight any unattractive wrinkles on the left. Option/Alt + click on create icon new layer (newlayer) at the bottom of the layers palette. This action will open the create dialog new layer (newlayer).

Note. translator: if after the perfect manipulations you have not opened a window, like the author, try to go the following way: Layer - New - Layer ( layer - New - layer ) , now the necessary window should open in front of you.

Change mode (mode) on Soft light (Softlight), and then mark Fill with a neutral color mode “Soft light” (Fill With Soft-Light-Neutral Color). This action will fill the new layer with 50% gray (50% gray). You must save the mask you created for the blurry layer. Use the tool Clarifier (Dodge) to lighten wrinkles. In the picture you can see how the highlight layer will look like if you change the mode from soft light (Softlight) on Normal/Normal (Normal).

In this case, the woman's skin appeared to be very smooth with little bits of texture from the original skin. To save the image from the plastic effect, you need to add even more texture to the skin. I experimented with all kinds of different approaches. Although I'm not entirely happy with the technique presented, for the moment it worked for me to mimic the texture of the skin. I will keep experimenting until I find the best texture.

Step 5 So again create a new gray layer overlap (overlay). Option/Alt + click on create icon new layer (newlayer) at the bottom of the Layers Palette to open the New Layer dialog box. Check the box next to Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask, select overlap (overlay) from the drop down menu modes (mode) and mark Fill with a neutral color mode "Overlap" (Fill Withoverlay-Neutral Color)(50% gray (gray)).

The layers palette should look like the image below:

The last three layers have been adjusted opacity (opacity) And masklayer (layermask) blur layer. To have a clearer idea of ​​how the Texture layer will affect some things, temporarily increase opacity (opacity) blurred layer at 100%. You won't see the original texture, but you will see the texture you are about to create. You will also see lightened lines where wrinkles have been lightened; you can temporarily turn off the visibility of this layer if it will distract you.

Step 6 Select layer Texture (Texture) in mode Overlap (Overlay) and go to the filter Noise (noise) (Filter - Noise - Add Noise (filter - noise - addnoise). Check boxes Uniform (uniform) And Monochrome (Monochromatic) and add enough noise to make it look like a 3D movie frame.

The ideal value for this filter depends on the size and resolution of the file. Basically, there are no hard and fast rules that apply to all images. Rely on your own judgment and occasionally test print to see subtle effects such as noise.
Many photographers would settle for this effect, but this noise is too harsh for our purposes. With the Texture layer selected in Overlay mode, go to the filter Blur (Blur) (Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur (filter - Blur - GaussianBlur)), use just a little blur to soften the noisy edges without completely smoothing them out.

Step 7 Sometimes this is enough to do what you need, but usually I create a more complex set of textures to mimic real skin. So go to filter Embossing (Emboss) (Filter - Styling - Embossing (filter - Style - Emboss)).

The texture still looks unattractive, so we need to tone it down a bit. You can correctly transform any filter after using the command Let loose (Fade). Go to menu Editing (Edit) (immediately after applying the filter) and select Editing - Loosen Emboss (Edit - FadeEmboss).

Go back to the blurry layer and scale it down opacity (opacity) up to about 70%. You should have something similar to the image below:

Compare it to skin that has not been retouched.

Step 8 For the final retouched work, I brightened up the eyes, applied some light eye shadow and darkened the edges a bit.

Since the entire retouching process was done on the layers controlled by the blur layer, you can reduce it a bit if you wish. opacity (opacity), to get a more realistic rendering.

It is one of the unique features that allows you to implement the graphics editor Adobe Photoshop. A professional photographer, despite the ability to take high-quality photographs, still resorts to using Photoshop, because he knows how to retouch a face in Photoshop so as to hide all imperfections, enhancing the aesthetics of the image.

If you apply professional retouching, then even the most nondescript photo can turn into a skillful image that can be considered a masterpiece.

Photo retouching in Adobe Photoshop will relieve the skin of flaws

A few years ago, many refused to be photographed if unwanted pimples appeared on the skin of the face. In some cases, they even tried to postpone the date of the photo shoot. Of course, even at that time there were masters who could perform high-quality retouching. But for the implementation of such a process, it was necessary to create and maintain certain conditions, as well as the presence of a sufficient amount of free time.

At present, thanks to the graphic editor, photo retouching is possible for everyone who has become familiar with the capabilities of the program, studied the detailed instructions of experienced designers or photographers, and consolidated their knowledge in practice. At the same time, such a process will not take too much time, especially for those who have already improved their practical skills.

The process of removing defects on the skin

First of all, the user must open the photo to be corrected in a graphic editor. In order to keep the original image, you should duplicate the layer, creating an exact copy. Directly face retouching will be carried out on the resulting copy. Firstly, this way it will be possible to save the original photo in case of unsuccessful retouching, and secondly, at the end of the process, it will be possible to compare both photos by placing them side by side.

The image that is planned to be retouched is enlarged to 100%, so that it is comfortable to detect defects and eliminate them all as efficiently as possible.

The most common facial defects are pimples, wrinkles, scars. To eliminate them, Photoshop has several successful tools, one of which is the Spot Healing Brush. Using such a tool is easy, just select it, and then point to the problem area and click. After such a simple action, pimples disappear, and the face becomes clean.

Unfortunately, you can't retouch a photo with a spot repair brush if the defects are in contact with individual parts of the face (eyebrows, lips, hair). Otherwise, retouched skin fragments may not look quite aesthetically pleasing. They can look quite "dirty" because they capture neighboring pixels.

Figuring out how to do face retouching in Photoshop, if the defects are on the border of neighboring parts of the face, is also easy. Only to complete this task, you will need a different tool, in particular, the Stamp. By selecting it, the user must set the hardness parameter to 75%.

The principle of working with the Stamp tool is no different from the principle of working with a Spot Healing Brush. Initially, you should set the tool on the point of the image, accompanied by an ideal state, and then press the "Alt" key, thereby confirming the choice of the sample. Then it remains to move to the area where the defect is located and just click.

Despite the fact that photo retouching is not the most difficult process, since anyone can master the technique of its implementation with the desire and perseverance, there are still many specific secrets and subtleties that are also very important to master in order to ensure an effective result.

In particular, if aesthetic defects are found on the forehead, the area of ​​skin that will act as a sample should be taken only from the right or left side of the defect itself. It is not allowed to move up or down, since the texture of the skin of the forehead changes significantly from top to bottom. But for other parts of the face, such a strict rule may not apply.

Facial scars are easiest to remove using the Patch tool.

Upgrading the Aesthetics

A beautiful photo requires the participation of a real professional who will be able to eliminate aesthetic flaws, make all the necessary adjustments, but at the same time create a natural appearance, moving away from the effect of artificial (plastic) skin.

Indeed, in order for a face photo to be accompanied by naturalness, it is important to know how to retouch a photo in Photoshop, how to create a natural texture, because after working with a healing brush, not only aesthetic flaws disappear, but also the pores of the skin itself.

Eliminate the effect of plastic skin

Many novice designers make mistakes by completing the retouching process immediately after removing facial skin defects. Such a photograph looks fake, respectively, everyone who views it immediately understands that it has been subjected to adjustments.

In order for the retouching to be of high quality, the appearance of the plastic skin effect that appears in the process of working with a photo should be eliminated.

Initially, you should create a copy of the layer on which the retouching was carried out. After that, go to the “Parameter” item, then successively to the “Blur”, “Gaussian Blur” sub-items.

In the window that opens, set the blur parameter to 20 pixels, and it is important to lower the opacity parameter to half (50%). Selecting these options will reduce the blur effect.

On the "Layers" panel is the "Add Layer Mask" icon, which should be clicked while holding down the "Alt" key. The resulting black layer mask allows you to hide all the changes made.

Next, take the brush located in the Layers panel, giving preference to the medium size and white color. After that, with the help of a brush, all parts of the face are painted over, excluding the area of ​​​​the lips and eyes. It is very important that all areas are carefully painted over. In Photoshop, it is possible to control the quality of such painting. To do this, just hold down the "Alt" key and click on the mask thumbnail. After such actions, you can visually observe how well the skin areas were treated.

At the next stage, the user must return to the layer that has to be retouched, after which a new transparent layer should immediately be created.

You should click the "Ctrl" key, and then immediately on the mask icon. After the appearance of the selected area, it must be immediately filled with gray, set the opacity parameter to 50%.

Next, the user must add noise by going to the "Filter" option. In the filter window that opens, it is important to make changes to some parameters. In particular, in the "Effect" parameter, an indicator is selected that is in the range from 2.5% to 3%. In the "Distribution" parameter there is an item "By Gauss", next to which it is important to check the box, in the same way the check box is set next to the item "Monochrome". It remains to accept the changes made by clicking "OK".

Finally, it's very important to switch to the new layer blend mode, preferring Soft Light mode, when the designer wants to make a subtle, almost invisible texture. And by switching to the "Overlay" mode, it is possible to create a skin texture, accompanied by more expressiveness.

Hair retouching

When all the aesthetic flaws are removed from the face, you can certainly complete the process at this point, but to enhance the overall aesthetics of the photo, it is best to do additional hair retouching in Photoshop, especially when they are excessively tousled.

Without knowledge of how to retouch hair in Photoshop, in this case, of course, you can’t do it. Removing strands that have come out of your hair is completely easy by using the Healing Brush tool again. However, when carrying out such actions, everything should be done so that the main background does not undergo serious changes in these places. Otherwise, it can immediately "signal" the unnaturalness of the image.

To solve such a problem, you should choose as a sample the area that is as identical as possible to where the strand is knocked out in the photo, after which, using the Healing Brush, the background sample is transferred to the right places. The process of removing strands is simple, but painstaking, requires perseverance and increased attention.

It is also very important to correct the border of the hairline and the main background. You can make it even by using the “Finger” tool, with which it is easy to raise and, conversely, lower hair irregularities. Satisfied with the result, the graphic designer must save the finished photo.

So, in Photoshop, there is an incredible amount of possibilities that allow you to increase the aesthetic level of any photo. Even a photo taken not by a professional photographer, but by a simple amateur, can become a real masterpiece of photographic art if it is retouched by a real professional.

There are many ways to retouch skin in Photoshop. Often, after retouching, the skin looks unnatural. We will show you several ways to smooth the skin of the face while maintaining the texture of the pores.

Step 1 - Removal of skin defects

Tools and Patch ideal for skin retouching.

Tool Healing Brush (Healing brush)works the same as Clone Stamp (cloning stamp). Healing Brush (Healing brush)- allows you to correct skin defects, taking into account their environment. Similar to the clone tools, the toolHealing Brush (Healing brush)uses certain areas of the image (skin) for copying. But unlike a stamp, a toolHealing Brush (Healing brush)takes into account the structure, lighting, shadows of the processed area of ​​the image (skin).


Patch Tool is a mixture Lasso (Lasso) and tool Healing Brush (Healing brush). Patch allows you to restore a selected area by cloning pixels taken from a neighboring area or sample. LikeHealing Brush (Healing brush), the Patch tool takes into account the structure, lighting and shadows of the processed area of ​​the image (skin). That is Patch creates patches on the image. You specify where the patch will be located(Destination - destination)and how will you "darn" her(Source - source) .


What tool for what?

Using Patch you can retouch large areas of the skin, such as wrinkles. By usingHealing Brush (Healing brush)it is worth retouching small details. If you are processing portraits of private individuals, be sure to ask in advance if freckles, scars and moles need to be removed. Small pimples can be removed without asking the customer. In this example, we will show how to useHealing Brushsmall skin anomalies can be removed.

Choose a toolHealing Brush (Healing brush)
- Set clone source by clickingAlt + left mouse buttonin the corresponding place of the image
- Move the tool over the areas of the image that need to be restored.

So we remove all small pimples and small problem areas on the face.

Step 2 - Skin color

After processing Healing Brush (Healing brush) and Patch (Patch), the skin may look uneven. Some parts of it may be lighter, while others are darker. In order for the skin to appear fresher and cleaner, this deficiency must be corrected. At the same time, it is important not to affect or disturb the light-shadow pattern.

First, we will increase the effect of uneven skin. The fastest way is to create an adjustment layer Vibration and move both sliders - Vibrance and Saturationto the right to about +100. The value depends on how dark your face is in the picture. The darker the face, the less you need to move the slider to the right.


Vibration

Now you can clearly see where there is a color imbalance. By the way, adjustment layer Vibration can be used to detect extra tones in an image.

Create a new layer with 50% gray fill. To do this, go to the menuEditing - Fill (Edit - Fill)and in the drop-down list of the dialog box, select 50% gray . Blend Mode -Overlay (Overlap). This mode works as follows: all pixels whose brightness is greater than 50% gray will brighten (for light) and darken (for dark) light and dark areas, respectively, the rest, whose brightness is below 50%, will become transparent.


Now take a soft brush with an opacity of 5-15 percent. Set the toolbar to dark gray as the foreground color and light gray as the background color. With the X key, you can quickly switch between them.


That's what's happening - you see it in normal mode.

Adjustment layer Vibration can be disabled or removed.

Adjustment layer Vibration appeared in Photoshop CS4. If you are working with early versions of Photoshop, you can useChannel Mixer. Here you need to check the boxMonochrome (Monochrome)and move the sliders of the red and green channels to the left, and the blue channel to the right. So I have the same effect in black and white as the dynamics adjustment layer.


Step 3 - Smooth skin with pore texture

Option 1 - Blur the skin - the classic way

Filter the easiest (classic) way to get smooth skin.

Merge all visible layers onto a new layer CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+D and turn it intosmart object (Smart Object). Advantage smart object (Smart Object)is that the degree of blur can be changed at any time.

Now choose from the menuFilter - Blur - Gaussian Blur (Filter => Blur => Gaussian Blur).

We choose the radius at which the skin is sufficiently blurred.

Add to smart object (Smart Object)black mask (by clicking on ALT ) and with a white brush (transparency about 50%) paint over the places where we want to see the effect of the filterGaussian Blur. The filter should not affect the contour of the face, hair, eyes and mouth.


We regulate layer transparency, set to about 40-70%. The pores reappeared on the face.

Option 2 - Blur and sharpen in one layer

Blurring the skin with the Gaussian Blur filter loses some detail and fine pores. The more blur, the more loss.

The second popular skin smoothing method is blurring combined with sharpening.

As in the first option, all visible layers are merged into one layer. CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E .


Choosing a blend modeVivid Light (Bright light)and invert the contents of the layer with CTRL + I. This blend mode is similar toOverlay (Overlap)with the difference that pixels are not multiplied, but added and not divided, but subtracted.

Important: Convert the layer tosmart object (Smart Object)so that you can change the blur and sharpen filter settings at any time.

Choosing a filter Gaussian Blurwith a radius of about 3-4 pixels. Click OK.


Then apply the filterHigh Pass (Color Contrast). For this we go to Filter > Others > High Pass (Filter> Others> Color Contrast). In the filter choose a radius from 22 to 30 pixels.


Filter High Pass (Color Contrast)often used to sharpen an image.

With the help of a layer mask, you can apply the filter only to the areas where you want to see its effect.

Try changing the blend mode toOverlay (Overlap).The advantage of this method is that the pores of the skin remain on the face after blurring.

Option 3 - Blur and sharpenusing Blending Options

As in the first and second options, all visible layers are merged into one layer. CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E .

Convert layer tosmart object (Smart Object)and apply blur filterGaussian Blur - Gaussian Blur or Surface Blur - Blur on the surface. Then go to Blending Options (for this you need to double-click on the layer in the layers window) and select the option Gray (Grey) in the color zone.


Now you can decide whether you want to reveal the skin blur and hide the pore texture (to do this, select the upper slider) or to reveal the pore structure from the bottom layer (to do this, select the lower slider).

In this case, we choose the blur effect. We move black slider right. Pressing ALT, you can split the slider triangle to create smooth tonal transitions. Do the same with the right white ) with the slider by moving it to the right.

If you disable all other layers and leave only this one enabled, you will see what happened.

For comparison, blur and sharpen from the second option.


And at the end of a little advice. If the texture of the pores does not appear as you expected, you can put it on a separate layer. Go to channels. Select blue channel STRG+A, copy it STRG+C and paste into the document STRG+V .

Then in Blending Optionsyou can remove all the light areas, leaving only the dark details in the pores. Change the mode of this layer to Luminosity (Brightness) .


You can add a layer mask to this layer to hide or reveal pores in certain places. This is what this layer looks like (all other layers are turned off).

This is what the effect looks like:

Before and after retouching: