skin_softening

Home | Tutorials | Links | Contact

Skin Softening Preserving Detail

This is a great technique for professional glamour skin retouching. It will soften the skin but at the same time it preserves detail. This process will enable you to have full control over the blurring of the shadows and areas with light and also control over the amount of skin texture. The original idea is from Christy Schuler. I made the adaptation to GIMP with a few modifications. For this tutorial I used a high iso ( ISO 1600 ) snapshot.

1. Open image.

2. Using the Clone and Healing tools remove all mayor blemishes, scars, pimples and bags below eyes.

3. Now using your favorite tool like free select tool, select by color, quick mask, etc. try selecting only the skin in the face leaving out hair, eyebrows, eye lashes, eyes, lips and teeth. For this image the Select be Color tool was used with the "add to current selection" mode and 10.0 feather radius and threshold of about 10 to 15. Try to select ALL the skin, if patches of skin are missing or if something else is selected we will take care of it later in the process. It is a good idea to Zoom in to check your selection.

4. Now copy your selection. Edit > Copy.

5. Create new transparent layer and paste selection. Edit > Paste.

6. Turn off visibility of background layer.

7. On top layer start erasing with a soft brush anything that is not skin like hair, eyes, lips, eyebrows, teeth, etc.

8. Duplicate background layer and place it on top of the stack. Add a black layer mask and with a soft white brush and paint areas where skin is missing. Zooming in check if all skin was selected.

9. Merge down top layer. Layer > Merge Down.

10. Now duplicate the top layer three additional times.

11. Rename layers to bottom to top: blur light, blur shadows, texture and high pass.

12. Add layer masks to the "blur light" and "blur shadows" layers.

13. Now copy the skin selection so select the "blur light" layer image and go to Edit > Copy. Now paste it into both layer masks. Invert color of the "blur shadows" layer mask.

14. Turn on visibility of Background layer and turn off the visibility of the "high pass" and "texture layers". Select image of "blur light" layer and apply a heavy amount of gaussian blur. It is o.k. to overdo this effect. For this image I selected a blur radius of 60. UPDATE : Actually it is NOT a good idea to overdo the amount of gaussian blur. It will result in a too large halo that spreads beyond the skin selection. It is better to look carefully at the blurred layers and experiment with different values. For this image a blur radius of 45 would have been better. Remember that large images will require more gaussian blur and smaller images less amount.

15. Repeat the gaussian on the "blur shadows" layer.

16. Turn on visibility of the "high pass" and "texture" layers.

17. Apply 10 radius gaussian blur to "high pass" layer. Colors > Invert.

18. Reduce opacity of "high pass" layer to 50%. Layer > Merge Down. Go to Colors > Levels and move left arrow to 70 and right arrow to 185.

19. Change "texture" layer mode to Overlay. Desaturate this layer. Colors > Desaturate.

20. Sometimes dark lines will appear at the border of the skin selection. If that happens simply use the eraser on the "texture" layer. It is a good idea to zoom and to check your work. Check all the border of the skin selection. UPDATE: You can also add a white layer mask to the "texture" layer and with a soft black brush paint on any areas to totally or partially eliminate the effect.

21. Play with the opacity of the "blur light", "blur shadows" and "texture" layers to get the results you want. You will have full control over the blurring of the shadows, the areas with light and the skin texture. If you want additional skin texture you can duplicate the "texture" layer or change its mode to Hard Light.

* UPDATE

As noted by lamaz1928 from Gimper.net forum there are skin glow problems with this technique. The gaussian blur effect causes a halo that spreads out of the skin boundaries. Fortunately the problem is easy to fix. First try to reduce the amount of applied gaussian blur to the "blur light" and "blur shadow" layers. Instead of using a blur radius of 60 for this image, a 45 blur radius would still be enough to soften the skin and would produce less halo effect. Remember that large images will require more gaussian blur and smaller images less amount. Then do the following :

22. Duplicate Background layer and place it on top of the layer stack. Add a black layer mask. Then with a soft white brush paint on the visible glow areas.

23. A view of the layer mask:

24. The final image: