Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I've done a few tutorials over the years
showing various methods to remove blotches and imperfections in skin in photos,
however, I found that the method shown in this tutorial is the quickest and most effective way
to do this while retaining the skin's texture. The result is flawless realistic-looking
skin without that plastic overworked look. Before we begin, if you want to know as soon as I upload
new Photoshop tutorials, smash that Subscribe button and please remember to click like if
you like this video. Open a photo of someone that you'd like to use for this project. I downloaded
this one from Shutterstock. The first step is to make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
On this copy, we'll remove all the major blemishes and imperfections.
To get in closer, let's zoom into our subject's face. Press "z" on your keyboard and drag it over
the area you want to zoom into. To reposition the face on our canvas, press and hold
the "Space bar" as we drag the image. Open the healing and retouching tools. We'll be using
the top three. Let's start with the healing brush tool. We can adjust the size of any brush tool by
making sure our caps lock key is off and pressing the left or right bracket key on our keyboard.
Go to a blemish-free area and Alt or Option-click it to sample the pixels and then release.
Place your tool on the area you want to heal and brush over that area. It's matching the texture,
lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled pixels to the pixels being healed.
Sample the same or other blemish-free area and continue brushing over areas you want to heal.
Another way to heal an image is with a Spot Healing brush tool.
This brush doesn't require us to specify a sampled spot. Just brush directly over the
blemish or imperfection. It automatically samples from around the retouched area.
If your subject has bags under the eyes, we'll use the Patch tool. Drag a selection under the
eyes. Then drag it to an area we want to replace it with. Press Ctrl or Cmd + D to deselect it.
If the areas under the eyes are still too dark, we can lighten them with the Dodge tool.
Choose mid-tones and reduce the exposure anywhere between 10 to 20%. Brush over the dark areas. Each
time we brush over them they get lighter. If there are areas that have too much color
like the corners of the eyes in this example, open the Sponge tool. The mode is Desaturate
and make the Flow very low. Adjust the size of the brush and brush over the areas to desaturate them.
Now that we removed the major blemishes and other imperfections, we'll smooth out and
blend the skin. Make a copy of it and invert the copy by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + I. We'll
convert it into a smart object so we can modify it non-destructively. To do this, click the icon
at the upper right and click "Convert to Smart Object. Change its blend mode to vivid light.
At this point, your image should be mostly gray. Go to Filter,
Other, and High Pass. Basically, High Pass looks for edges in the image and highlights them.
Notice the image inside the preview window looks mostly gray, however, since we applied the vivid
light blend mode to the layer, we can immediately see the result. The image that i'm working on
has a resolution of 150 pixels per inch, so a radius of 15 pixels will give a good result.
It's important to note that if your image has a lower or higher resolution, the radius amount
will have to be lowered or raised. Since the layer we're applying the high pass filter to is a smart
filter, we can always adjust the radius at any time. Go to Filter, Blur, and Gaussian Blur.
Increasing or decreasing the radius will blur the high pass effect. I'll make it 5 pixels which
gives this image a perfect balance of smoothness and sharpness. To still show the skin pores again,
you'll need to adjust the amount depending on your image's resolution. Lastly, we'll restore back the
hair, eyes, ears, clothing, and areas that have sharp edges such as the eyebrows and nostrils.
Click the layer mask icon to make a layer mask next to the active layer. Check your foreground
and background colors. If they are not black and white respectively, press "d" on your keyboard.
Open your brush tool and brush picker.
Pick a soft round brush. Make the hardness 0% and the opacity and flow 100%. Now,
brush over those areas you want to restore and feel free to adjust the size of your brush.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!