Skin Smoothing... a tutorial?

Anyone got a good tutorial on skin smoothing? I have a series of images that could really benefit.

Example:

 

No tutorial needed. 10 seconds with Imgagemonic Portraiture and 10 seconds with NIK sharpener pro gave me this (no BSing on the time it took either!):


My version is on the left... lol

If your profile did not say it was OK to edit your pics, there is no way I would have done this.

 

Well... gee thanks!

However, since I don't have $169.00 dollars to spend, any one ELSE got a methid I can do in CS?

 

Did you do the obvious... like google or search on YOUTUBE? If not, do a couple of fast searches there.

A long time ago, there was something on the net that talked about it, but it was like a 15-20 minute process just to do less than what Portraiture did in 10 seconds, but it was specific to that. Some guy did either a PDF or a WORD document that detailed it. Nice, but man it was long and involved.

Let me look if I have it. If I do, I will gladly post here. I have about 30-40 gig of stuff to go check through!

EDIT: Found it... It is a rather involved Word document. The work is from Tom Hole, a flicker user. PM me an email, and I can send it to you... for the small sum of $5.99 plus shipping and handling.

(the shipping and handling thing was a joke... for those that don't get it!)

 

Maybe you can be clearer on this Jerry but from the looks of things, those applications blur out the skin which is a big "no no" in the "serious" retouching world. When in this world, i dodge and burn like crazy.

But, of course, i very rarely play in the serious retouch world and just use negative clarity on a mask in lightroom 2. In photoshop, i believe a light light gaussian blur will do a similar effect. But, like mentioned before, dodge and burn is the "best" way to go and many tuts can be found on youtube

 

Hi RM, why not give this site a visit?

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/

 

This one is the best as far as I'm concerned. Perfect in that you can keep the skin texture as opposed to the evil gausian blurr only deal. Very easy to follow.

http://www.christyschuler.com/retouching.html

Love & Bass

 

Get the book "Skin" by Lee Varis. It rocks, and it has a fantastic section/tutorial on smoothing skin.

In rangefinder mag many years ago Eddie Tapp had a great article on a digital softar filter he came up with. For some reason I can no longer find the article online, but you can download the action from this guy's blog.

http://www.backlightphotography.com/blog/2007/03/soft-focus-photoshop-action-for.html

 

if you look you can find some free skin smoothing actions

 

I sent him a couple of emails with tutorials on skin smoothing. I have SKIN... did not give it the attention it deserves, but the time I did spend with it was enough for me to say that I liked it.

 

Jerry thanks:

 

You guys lost too much of the skin texture. Yes - tutorial needed.
You shouldn't let a program handle it for you. There is a reason why professional retouchers spend 20 hours on one single photo. Too many photographers lose all the skin texture by just blurring the crap out of their photos.

If you want to do it properly there are lots of tutorials over at http://retouchpro.com. Registration needed but it's worth it. There are some interesting stuff there.

Here are some tips:
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213 (this is what I do and it doesn't take very long - registration required)
http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1169397_i62L4/1 (advanced way of doing it - I don't use this technique)
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=272 (another way of doing it..)
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2mE8_ZN4ho[/ame] (full retouch walkthrough by a pro retoucher - watch this)