Simple Skin Smoothing in Photoshop

The original image

As you can see, the girls skin is not that smooth and it also has some imperfections. We'll get rid of them in a few steps:

1. Using the healing brush to remove imperfections

Select the Healing brush (J) and while holding down the Alt key, select an area that you want to use as a pattern:

Then click on the imperfections to remove them. You may select a different pattern as you wish in order to fit your work area. Using a smaller brush size gives you a more accurate correction.
This is my result:

2. Smoothing the skin using the Median Filter

We need to make a selection of the skin (we don’t want to smooth the eyes or the hair too).
Press Q to enter the Quick Mask Mode, and using the Brush Tool (B) with the appropriate size, define the needed area:

Press Q again to get the selection, press Ctrl+Shift+I, right-click inside it and select Layer via Copy:

Apply the median filter (Filter-Noise-Median):

Reduce the layer opacity to 80%:

3. Adding a bump as a final touch

Create a new layer.
Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E to merge the layers.
Press Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer.
Apply a Gaussian blur (Filter-Blur-Gaussian Blur):

Set the blending mode to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 45%:

This is my final result:

Click the image for full size


by Bueaka