Basic Skin Retouching

For quick skin retouching, you will only need to use a couple of tools! This is a quick and easy process which can easily be applied to create smooth, blemish free skin.

- Spot healing tool
- Soften

This photograph is a good example of one that may require a little skin retouching; in general the photograph is well balanced, with good contrast, so it doesn't need any other fixing up!

Every photograph you see in a magazine will probably have had varying levels of this kind of retouching done before it is published - don't be fooled!

The first thing you will be using are the Healing Tools - the little plaster icons:

Spot Healing Tool



Healing Tool


(To switch between the two, left mouse click on the icon and hold it down for a few seconds, and select from the little menu that will pop out to the side)

The only difference between the two, is that with with Spot Healing Tool, you just need to click on the blemish and it will automatically remove the blemish. Easy peasy!

With the Healing tool, you must first choose a 'clear' area, from which the picture information will be taken in order to heal the blemish. To select an area, pick a part of the skin which is a similar colour, but with no blemish, and holding down ALT, click the left mouse button. You will need to adjust the brush size to ensure this works properly.

I am using a brush sizes between 15-30 pixels.

You can play around with this to get a clear idea of which is most suitable for the job, its just down to trying and testing essentially :)

I have 'healed' the blemishes, and am left with this:

As you can see, a lot of the visible acne from before has vanished! However, some of the skin is still a little uneven, which is where the Soften tool comes in.

Although it is down to you which size brush you use, and the opacity, I usually use a soft edged brush, at 50% opacity. Also, make sure the brush mode is set to 'Normal' as you can see here.

Now you can just brush over the 'bumpy' areas, to smooth out the appearance of the skin. Make sure you don't go too over the top with this as the image may end up looking unrealistic, and never go over any of the facial features: eyes, nose, mouth etc!

As you can see, our subject now has blemish free, smooth skin!

You can repeat the above steps as much or as little as you want, until you are happy with how the image looks! This just goes to show how you don't have to be an industry expert to be able to airbrush your photographs :)

Good luck!