Easily Smooth and Soften Skin in Photoshop – Best High-End Techniques

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1. 0:00 Introduction
2. 1:46 Initial Cleanup with the Spot Healing Brush Tool
3. 5:09 Convert the Portrait Into a Smart Object
4. 5:40 Soften the Skin with the Texture slider in Camera Raw
5. 7:31 Isolate your adjustment with Layer Masks
6. 10:31 Turn Your Portrait into two Smart Objects
7. 11:29 Apply The Blur Filter
8. 12:24 Apply the High Pass Filter
9. 13:00 Combine the Blur & High Pass Layers with Blending Modes
10. 13:32 Adjust the Effects to get Beautiful Soft Skin
11. 14:29 Isolate your adjustment with Layer Masks
12. 16:27 How the Free Skin Smoothing Photoshop Action Works

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Smooth skin in Photoshop with two non-destructive techniques that soften the skin while keeping its texture intact, so the portrait never looks too soft or too fake.

This tutorial is for anyone retouching a portrait, even if you have never opened Camera Raw. By the end, you will be able to clean up blemishes without flattening the skin and soften the skin in any version of Photoshop. You will also have a free action that builds the whole effect with one click.

The first technique uses the Texture slider in the Camera Raw Filter. It is the fast route, and it takes only a few steps.

The second technique builds the smoothing from Gaussian Blur and High Pass on a stack of Smart Objects. It needs a few more steps, but it works all the way back to Photoshop CS6 and gives you total control over the effect.

Both techniques are non-destructive. Nothing is baked into the pixels, so you can come back and adjust your edits at any time.

The video was recorded in Photoshop 2019 (version 20), and every tool it uses is still in the current version. The Texture slider arrived in the May 2019 Camera Raw update, about six weeks before the video, and it still sits in the Basic panel today.

What You Will Learn

• How to remove blemishes with the Spot Healing Brush Tool without destroying the skin texture
• How to soften skin with the Texture slider in the Camera Raw Filter
• How to limit a Smart Filter to the skin with an inverted layer mask
• How to separate texture from color with Gaussian Blur and High Pass
• How to load and run the free skin softening action
• How to blur one area of the face with the Lasso Tool and a feathered selection

Requirements

Keyboard Shortcuts

Technique 1: Smooth Skin in Photoshop with the Camera Raw Texture Slider

This first technique is the fast one. It needs Photoshop 2019 or later, because it relies on the Texture slider. If you are on an older version, skip ahead to the second technique.

Step 1: Remove Large Blemishes with the Spot Healing Brush Tool

Start with the portrait layer selected and press CtrlJ (Windows) or CommandJ (macOS) to duplicate it. This step is not required, but it gives you a before and after to compare when you are done.

Before you smooth the skin of any portrait, remove the large blemishes. The smoothing technique will not get rid of them. Zoom in and look for the bigger distractions, such as a spot on the cheek or a mark near the mouth.

Create a new layer so that you work non-destructively, and name it Spot Healing. All the cleanup happens on this layer.

Select the Spot Healing Brush Tool from the toolbar. In the Options bar, make sure Sample All Layers is checked. Otherwise the tool sees only the empty layer and has nothing to sample.

Press ] to make the brush larger and [ to make it smaller. The round outline shows you how big the brush is.

Step 2: Use Lighten and Darken Modes to Keep the Skin Texture

Most people use the Spot Healing Brush Tool in Normal mode. In Normal, Photoshop samples pixels from around the spot you paint, and in most cases it does a good job.

Zoom in, though, and you will sometimes see that it destroys the skin texture. That happens because Normal targets every pixel under the brush. You usually want to target only specific pixels.

In the Options bar, change the Mode to Lighten or Darken. The mode you pick depends on the blemish you are removing.

• Lighten: the blemish is darker than the skin tone. The tool replaces only the darker pixels and leaves the highlights alone.
• Darken: the blemish is brighter than the skin tone. The tool replaces only the brighter pixels and leaves the shadows alone.

Select Lighten and click on the darker spots. Notice that the highlights stay put. You remove only the dark pixels, which keeps the skin texture.

Double-click the Hand Tool to fit the image to the screen, then work through the rest of the darker blemishes. Go quickly here. You only need the large ones gone, because the smoothing will take care of the small spots.

Now zoom in on the corner of the mouth. There is a white spot there. In Lighten mode, a smaller brush will not remove it, because the spot is brighter than the skin. Switch the Mode to Darken and click it. The shadows stay untouched.

Switch between the two modes as often as you need. Double-click the Hand Tool again and toggle the Spot Healing layer’s eye icon to compare the before and after.

Step 3: Convert the Layers to a Smart Object

Select the Spot Healing layer, hold Shift and click the portrait layer below it. Right-click and choose Convert to Smart Object. Both layers go into one Smart Object.

A Smart Object is a container that holds one or more layers. You can apply adjustments, distortions and filters to it non-destructively, and come back to edit them at any time.

With the Smart Object selected, go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. The Camera Raw Filter adjusts the tonality, color and details of a photo. That is exactly what you need for soft, natural skin.

Step 4: Lower the Texture Slider to Smooth the Skin

In the Basic panel, find the Texture slider. It sits right above Clarity and Dehaze. Zoom in on the face so you can see what it does.

The Texture slider enhances texture when you drag it right and reduces texture when you drag it left. Drag it left and watch the skin smooth out. You do not need to go all the way. Stop before the skin loses its pores. On this portrait, a value near -75 did the job.

If the skin is still not smooth enough, bring Clarity down into the negative values too. It also smooths the skin, but go easy with it. A little is enough.

Once the texture is down, click the Detail tab and add a little Sharpening. That brings some of the skin texture back.

For this portrait the video leaves Masking at 0, because it does not make a big difference. On other images it can be valuable. The guide to sharpening photos in Photoshop goes deeper into the Detail panel.

Click OK. Photoshop applies the smoothing to the entire image, and that is not what you want. The next step limits it to the skin.

Step 5: Paint the Smoothing onto the Skin

In the Layers panel, click the Smart Filters mask thumbnail. Press CtrlI (Windows) or CommandI (macOS) to invert it, or click Invert in the Properties panel.

The mask turns black, which hides the filter everywhere. On a mask, black hides, white reveals, and the levels of gray in between give you partial transparency.

Select the Brush Tool and make sure the foreground color is white. Paint over the areas that need smoothing, and only those areas. The skin softens where you paint while everything else keeps its detail.

Made a mistake? Press X to swap to black and paint the effect back out. Press X again to return to white.

You can also blend the filter, much like you blended the Spot Healing Brush Tool. Double-click the icon to the right of Camera Raw Filter in the Layers panel. The window that opens works a lot like the Fade command. It lets you lower the filter’s Opacity and change its Blending Mode.

Set the Blending Mode to Lighten if you want to keep the original highlights. The video keeps Normal at 100% opacity because it looks better on this portrait, but the option is there when a photo needs it. Click OK.

Double-click the Hand Tool and toggle the eye icon next to Smart Filters to see the before and after. Because the whole thing is non-destructive, you can double-click the Camera Raw Filter name at any time and change the texture or the sharpening.

This is a very powerful way to smooth skin in Photoshop, and it is the one to reach for whenever you have a current version.

Technique 2: Soften Skin with Gaussian Blur and High Pass in Photoshop CS6 or Later

This technique works in older versions of Photoshop, all the way back to CS6. It takes a few more steps, but it gives you total control over the skin softening. The free action at the end of the post builds all of it for you.

Step 1: Build Three Smart Objects in a Group

Select the portrait layer, right-click and choose Convert to Smart Object.

Press CtrlJ (Windows) or CommandJ (macOS) to duplicate the Smart Object, then press it again. You now have three Smart Objects.

Hold Shift and select the two duplicates, then press CtrlG (Windows) or CommandG (macOS) to put them in a group. Expand the group so you can see both layers.

You will work with the bottom copy first. Turn off the eye icon on the top copy so you can be sure you are looking at the first duplicate only.

Step 2: Separate Texture and Color with Gaussian Blur and High Pass

Rename the bottom copy Blur. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Raise the Radius until you lose all the detail in the face. Around 6 pixels does it on this portrait. Click OK.

Gaussian Blur removes the high-frequency information, which is the fine detail and texture. What is left is the color and the tones.

Turn the top copy back on and select it. This layer gets the opposite filter. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass, enter exactly the same value, 6 pixels, and click OK.

High Pass is the opposite of blur. It removes the low-frequency information and keeps only the details and texture of the layer.

Set the top layer’s blending mode to Linear Light and lower its Opacity to 50%. The two layers blend back into what looks like the original image.

Turn the group’s eye icon off and on to compare it to the portrait layer. It is virtually the same, just slightly different. The filters split each frequency onto its own layer, and the blending mode put the frequencies back together.

Now the texture lives on one layer and the colors on another. You can adjust each one on its own to soften the skin.

Step 3: Adjust the Filters for Smoother Skin

Now that you know what each filter does, change the settings to reduce the intensity of the skin texture. Start with the Blur layer. Double-click the Gaussian Blur label under the layer and raise the radius until the skin tones blend into a much smoother transition. The video lands at about 8 pixels. Click OK.

Then double-click the High Pass label on the top layer and reduce it. About 3 pixels keeps the texture without letting it fight the blur. Click OK.

That is the great thing about working with Smart Objects. If these settings do not work for your photo, double-click either label and try again.

Step 4: Mask the Group and Paint the Skin

Select the group and double-click its name to rename it Skin Softening.

Hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. That creates a black mask, which hides everything in the group.

Select the Brush Tool with white as the foreground color and paint over the skin. The softening appears only where you paint, exactly like the mask in the first technique.

The video moves quickly here. Take your time on your own image.

Click the group’s eye icon to see the before and after.

Step 5: Clean Up Blemishes Inside the Smart Object

You may notice a blemish or two left on the nose. That is because this technique skipped the Spot Healing Brush Tool cleanup. Since the layers are Smart Objects, you can go back and do it now.

Double-click the Smart Object thumbnail. It opens in a new tab. Create a new layer, select the Spot Healing Brush Tool, set the Mode to Lighten and paint away the larger blemishes on the nose and the rest of the skin.

For the white spots on the mouth, switch the Mode to Darken and remove them.

Close the tab and save. The changes apply to the image, and because the three Smart Objects are linked, every copy updates at once. The blur, the high pass and the portrait all see the cleaned-up skin.

These adjustments are all subjective. Do what works best for your image. Generally speaking, you do not want to push the effect too far, but that is up to you to decide.

Free Skin Softening Photoshop Action

The free action creates every layer, filter and group from the second technique with one click. Download the ATN file from the Practice Files box near the top of this post.

Load and Run the Action

Once the ATN file is on your computer, open the Actions panel. Click its icon, or go to Window > Actions.

Click the flyout menu in the top right corner of the panel and choose Load Actions. Select the ATN file. A skin softening action appears in the list.

Select the action and click the Play icon. Photoshop asks how much blur to add. The video starts with 6 pixels. Click OK.

Next it asks how much high pass to add. The video uses 2. Click OK.

A message appears with the next step: paint with white using the Brush Tool on the group’s layer mask to reveal the softening effect. Click Stop and keep working.

Select the Brush Tool, set the foreground color to white and paint on the group’s layer mask to reveal the skin smoothing. Expand the group and you will see the same layers you built by hand, plus one extra.

Fine-Tune the Blur with the Blur Edits Layer

The extra layer is called Blur Edits, and the video did not build it by hand. It lets you blur small portions of the face without affecting the rest of the photo.

Select the Blur Edits layer and pick the Lasso Tool. In the Options bar, set a Feather of about 10 pixels. The feather softens the edge of the selection so the blur blends in instead of ending in a hard line.

Draw a selection around the area you want to smooth, such as the forehead. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and raise the radius until the area looks soft and smooth, without blotches of color. Click OK.

Press CtrlD (Windows) or CommandD (macOS) to deselect.

Turn the Blur Edits layer off and on to compare. The skin in that area looks much smoother. On a real project you would go back and fine-tune some of the edges, but that is the idea.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

You now have two ways to smooth skin in Photoshop, and both keep the texture that makes a portrait look real.

Neither one is hard. Clean up the large blemishes first, soften with the Texture slider or the blur and high pass stack, and paint the effect onto the skin with a mask.

Watch the full video above to see every step on screen, and comment on the video if you have a question about your own portrait.

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Related Links

• Create a Highly Realistic Skin Texture In Photoshop
• High-End Skin Softening in Photoshop [New Technique]
• Realistic Skin Texture in Photoshop [FREE Download]
• How to Remove Blemishes in Photoshop: 2 New Methods
• Fix Skin Tones in Photoshop with One-Click! Powerful Curves Hack

Final Image

Drag the slider to see before and after

BeforeAfter