Airbrush skin like a pro. In this Photoshop retouching tutorial, you'll learn how to retouch skin like the professionals. Find out how to make skin look healthy without looking plastic or blurred.
Sample PSD (Photoshop Document)
Airbrushing Skin Photoshop Tutorial
Step 1
Open the photo into Photoshop. For this tutorial, try to use a high resolution image where you can see the skin texture.
Step 2
Create a duplicate layer and put it into a group. To do this, press Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer then Ctrl+G to place the new layer into a group. Name the group "Airbrush" and the layer "Blur". To retouch the skin, there will be two layers in the Airbrush group. The first layer we've created (the Blur layer) will be used to blur the skin. After that, we'll add another layer to restore the natural skin texture.
Step 3
Have the Blur layer selected. To blur this layer, use the Surface Blur filter. This filter blurs like the Gaussian Blur filter except it can retain edge detail. We'll need to blur the layer so that the skin is smoothed and somewhat blurry without having the edges
Here's what my image looks looks like after the Surface Blur filter. Your image should look similar with details such as the eye intact. If the eye becomes blurry, your settings are too strong. Undo and redo the Surface Blur filter with a lower setting.
Step 4
Create a new layer and move it above the Blur layer. Name this layer "Texture" and change the blend mode to Hard Light. This layer, as the name states, will be used to add a slight texture to the skin and also adjust the skin tonality.
The texture created in this layer will contribute to the final results very minimally - the difference can only be easily seen zoomed in on high resolution images and varies from image to image. Even though the result is very minimal, it ensures that no area of the skin looks too smooth or plastic.
Below is an example of this. On the left, the image looks like a solid color, also known as plastic skin. The image on the right has a slight noise pattern to make the skin look more realistic.
Step 5
Make sure that you have the "Texture" layer selected. With that layer selected, press Shift+F5 or choose Edit > Fill. In the Fill tool, set the settings according to the image below. This will fill your layer with a 50% gray color.
Step 6
Open the Add Noise filter from the Filter > Noise menu. Enter in the settings shown in the image below. This will add some noise to the image that will prevent skin from looking plastic. It may look a little too sharp, but in the next step, we'll fix this with a Gaussian Blur filter.
Step 7
Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Blur the layer by 1 pixel.
Step 8
Now we'll temporarily tint the color of this layer. First, select the Eye Dropper tool from the toolbar. Sample an area on the skin that appears to be the average skin color. You don't have to be very precise because we will tune the color later in the tutorial. In the Color palette, click on the flyout menu below the close window button and select HSB sliders. We'll need to see the HSB values for the next step.
Step 9
Open the Hue/Saturation tool by pressing Ctrl+U or choosing Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Check the Colorize option and adjust the hue, saturation, and lightness values to match the HSB values from the color we sampled in the previous step. For the brightness, set this to
Step 10
Select the Airbrush group in the Layers palette and add go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All. This will create a layer mask filled with the color black that will hide the group. With this layer mask, we'll paint the areas were we want the skin to appear. Otherwise, this skin airbrushing effect will appear on the entire image.
Step 11
First, press D on your keyboard to set the foreground and background colors to the default black and white. Select the Brush tool and apply the settings below.
Zoom in to 100% and paint over the skin. The parts that you paint will appear smoother with a different skin tone. Don't worry if the skin tone doesn't look correct. This is because we didn't pick the correct color when we used the Hue/Saturation to tint the "Texture" layer. It's too difficult to do that without a preview, so we'll fix that later.
When painting, you'll need to change the brush size and hardness frequently. It would be tedious to always access the brush option menu to do this so take this as an opportunity to use hot keys. Use the following hot keys to help you with modifying the brush size and hardness:
- Decrease brush size: [
- Increase brush size: ]
- Decrease brush softness by 25%: Shift + [
- Increase brush softness by 25%: Shift + ]
When you're done, your layer mask should have the skin areas in white and the skin should look smooth.
Step 12
Now we're going to fix back the color and tone of the skin as we mentioned earlier in the tutorial. Select the "Texture" layer and press Ctrl+U to access the Hue/Saturation tool. Alter the settings to get a natural looking skin tone.
- The Hue setting is usually correct. I increased it by 10 to add more yellow to it to make the appearance of the red areas less visible.
- The Saturation setting usually needs to be reduced greatly. Adjust this until the skin tone looks natural but not too pale.
- The Lightness setting requires slight modification. A slight change in the lightness will create big difference in how the skin blends in with the image. As you adjust the setting, you will see how sensitive this setting is. Even though it requires high precision, it is easy to tell when it is the correct setting. If it is off, it will look really off. If it is at the correct setting, it will look a lot more natural.
Step 13
Finally, we're going to restore the skin details. Choose Image > Apply Image. Use the settings below.
The reason why we're applying data from the Red channel is because it contains the least skin imperfections. The image below shows the difference in the channels. The red channel hides many of the skin imperfections that are visible in the green and blue channel.
Final Results
Here's the final results after applying this airbrushing technique. In the image below, you can see how smooth the skin looks. Because the image below has been downsized to fit into this tutorial, it may look slightly plastic. However, when zoomed in, the texture is clearly visible.
This is a crop of an area zoomed in 100%. The tiny skin bumps are still visible. Even near the bottom right of the image, it still looks natural because of the "Texture" layer that we added. Without that layer, that area would appear as a solid color with no noise.
And as usual, here are the before and after images.
Update: Here's a video on retouching skin in Photoshop. It's a completely different tutorial than this one but I highly recommend you watch it.
Skin Retouching Photoshop Actions
Update 2: I highly recommend you try these skin retouching actions - they're the best actions you can get. To use, simply play the action then paint over the skin. You can airbrush skin, mattify skin, restore blown-highlights, and more. Highly recommended. The Pro version includes additional actions.
Update 3: If you're looking for something basic, download these Frequency Separation Photoshop actions. They're made a similar frequency separation technique shown in this tutorial and can autoretouch your photo using Photoshop's face detection technology. The Pro version works with 16 and 32-bit photos and lets you apply both modern and traditional frequency separation. Don't know what modern/traditional frequency separation is? Read below.
What is Modern vs Traditional Frequency Separation?
One of the techniques that you learned in this tutorial is Modern Frequency Separation. This is done using Photoshop's Surface Blur filter which gives more natural results. With Traditional Frequency Separation, the Gaussian Blur filter is used instead of Surface Blur. This gives a softer and more diffused look. It's also less natural-looking so I recommend using it with caution especially on portraits with wrinkly skin.
See this image from Denny's Tips as an example:
Targeted smoothing is rarely the best way to do this kind of thing, as you lose a LOT of detail in the face. This isn't a bad technique, but I would lower the opacity of the blur layer a bit and then use another layer of painted lights and darks to keep the pores on a person's face intact (without just added a noise layer).
It's fine for a magazine cover, but people don't look like this is real life :).
I thank you for taking the time to do a such a detailed posting. I've been looking for this exact tutorial for over 6 months. Finally, I know how to get clear skin w/o the plastic look.
I hope you disregard the smart "I would have done this or you should do that" comments. I don't see any posts by them. Only you! Thank you.
Ranard
incridible, i like that.. thanks for tutorial
We work much with Photoshop, this tutorial I searched.
Thanks to the Author.
Sorry for my Bad English
P.S is a nice Girl 😉
thank you so much for the great tutorial, this worked wonders. and now I know models aren't naturally flawless. :o)
EXCELLENT tutorial!!! thank you... and for the people who says that it looks plastic! that because you did not do it correctly! Mine looks like real (and somewhat perfect) skin... there are some flaws that I leave in, but minor to make it look believable..
Nice Tutorial, Bueno tutorial compadre... internet es la futura escuela, y para nada de mala calidad.
Saludos...
Gracias por el aporte man.
Visitme 🙂
Kristina, did you have the correct layer selected? If you have a layer selected that has not been changed, there is no history to brush to.
I agree with those saying that this looks plastic. She looks like a china doll. Flesh is one of my banes, I have a hard time with it, but one thing I've learned is that there is no 'trick'. It's different every time, every skin tone. This is a good tutorial for learning how to begin, but these are not, in my opinion, professional results.
Who is girl?
Very very nice.Thank you.
i can't do step 11, it keeps on saying thAT i could not use the history brush because the history state does noty contain a corresponding layer. did i missed a step or that i did something wrong?
Nice tutorial. I work with photoshop everyday and have learnt something new from this. Ignore the comments above that say it doesn't work or there are steps missing.....it does and there aren't. These people do not understand photoshop and are using it incorrectly.
IT IS SUPPERB.....
Here's a hot tip for everyone saying it's too fake....noone said you had to do it by the book! Learning the concepts and then playing around with the settings gave me a great natural finish, thanks so much, this is just what i was looking for.
wow! thanks! it was really easy following the instructions, hot keys helped as well!! great job!
Dude, max respect! I really nailed it this time. hahaha! 😀 More power to your team. ^_^V
hi there, i have long been wanting to achieve this strategy you have changed my life!!!!
thank you
Thanks You Very Much I learn a lot to this tutorial but i make a little change to what you have done.. i apply the apply image to the texture layer rander than to the Group it self hehehehe.. then I find it more realistic.. but i think i always defend on the person editing the image..
Thank YOu Again.. Nice tutorial
I hate to say it, but parts of it still look far too smooth for being natural. This tutorial is slightly similar to one on Photoshop Tutorial's website, but their's is more realistic. If anyone wants that tutorial, look it up there.
Horrible tutorial. Several step left out...
1)How was the skin lightened?
2)Where did the mask from the group come from?
.... just to name a few!!!
its very interesting tutorial
Awesome tutorial! Worked perfectly...thanks!
Vici - #25 - Make sure you adjust to 'Hard Light' next to the Opacity level on the top. This will solve your problem.
your tutorial are very nice to under standing and ur explaining through is very nice , giving the nice opportunuty to learn photo shop effects , thank you tutorial out post
there are lots of other simple steps to do this work
Its all worked fine until it gets to the 50% grey scale + then later when i turn it back to a skin tone - i cant see the image at all, and when i try to apply image all i get is a screen of blockcolour because of the greyscale, and iv followed your instructions through thoroughly. so why hasnt it worked?!
i really don't get the persons who say they can't put layers in to groups, they don't have smart blur or something else because they use ps 7.0, i use it, and i can do all that och i have all the tools o;
the result was really nice(!), even if i had some trouble understanding all the tools from the eginning because i use photoshop with another language (swedish)
thx for a great tutorial
Hey I dont have the surface blur tool either? Do you have to download it as an add on or something :S HELPP!!
this dont look so realistic but i was searching tutorial like this.
this can be more reallistic. now it looks like as a model's photo. looks pretty.
When i'm doing step 11, when i start painting nothing is hapenning, the skin doesn't change? can you help me ASAP?
What I have noticed, is that it will work deferentially on deferent skin tone. However, if you do bit of a change according to what your image needs while you are working on it, then you will get almost 100% result of the effort has been made. I personally appreciate & liked it. Many thanks for your time.
Very nice tutorial, never done photoshop before and I managed to improve the skin quality on two drunk bastards. (don't ask me who they are) the change isn't dramatic but more suddle, making it look even more realistic. I might not have used exact tutorial settings, but it is definently a good starting point as a beginner to the program.
Very nice 5 stars or whatever they are called here 😉
Nice tutorial !!! best one I have found on the subject of airbrushing !!! Thank You !!!
I personally think the end result in this tutorial really looks fake and not good at all. But if you do some small changes along the way, and take down the opacity in the end result, I got a totaly different look. So I'm super happy with this guide. Saves me hours with the clone stamp and patch tool.
Thanks!
i Did not get it
~ i can't make a layer in groups~
i also don't have the right brush~
i don't have also surface blur~
i use photoshop 7.0
NICE EFFECT
Thank you for the tutorial!
Guess what. It still looks plastic and blurred. Sorry, but real skin still looks better and the sooner idiots in the magazine and fashion industry realise this, the sooner insecure women will stop trying to live up to impossible standards.
I didnt really like it. The skin still looks very fake in my opinion.
thanks it's great and cool tutorial
thank you so much
Hey!
I don't have the SMART BLUR OPTION in ma photoshop
🙁
wt shall i do?/
ur tutorial really seems interesting
is dere ne other alternative for SMART BLUR???
i use photoshop7.0...is dere ne other alternative?/ plz tell
Thank you so much for this tutorial, I've tried airbrushing so many times and failed, this is by far the best tutorial I have found online! THANKS!
This may be useful for people who don't want it to look that perfect and want it more natural:
I find that in step 13, if you use the green channel instead of the red, it looks more natural and less airbrushed. But you start seeing pimples and some wrinkles.
Nice start but the flesh is too "rangy". She has a big red splotch in her forehead. Examine the alpha channels. Many high end clients don't want china dolls. Some wrinkles need to be there, but just subdue them. Flesh is very hard to do and takes a great deal of time. There really is no blanket move. I felt the noise layer turned to 50% helped the flesh look better. Dont forget the hair edge as well.
-Jim
You make it sound like its something only the pros can really do, yet there are hundreds of automated tools that can even do this for you in seconds (example would be google+'s image uploaded has an airbrush mode that will automatically fix up your pictures). If you lower strength and play with blend modes/opacitys you will find everything in this tutorial can be fitted for just about anyone's needs. Photoshop is about toying around and playing with your creativity not black and white procedures.
thank you so much!!! now i learn something new....God bless you
Thats really a great tutorial.Very useful , thank you!
It's fine....!i got the best results....
I think, as a tutorial, you should have made the skin darker instead of brightening it like those makeup ads. Because the purpose for this tutorial is to airbrush skin right? Not to make it brighter. Perhaps offer it as an additional step but don't actually use it so that we can see the difference without the brightening in the final results.
Sorry. After refreshing the page, nothing is missing...
Thanks again.
Thank you for taking the time making Photoshop tutorials
Nicely done!
(You might put again the missing pictures though).