How to Apply Digital Makeup - Retouching for Students and Teachers in Photoshop

Fixing Skin - Don't Go Too Far

If there's one takeaway from the series so far, our hope is that you realize that "just because you can" doesn't mean you should. In preparing a portrait like this, you take some amount of creative license. It's up to you how for you should go with retouching. You'll know when you've gone too far, or someone will tell you.

Everything is a (Gaussian) Blur

Create a copy of the top layer in your file (Command+Option+J [Mac] or Control+Alt+J [Windows]). With this new layer, rename it something like "makeup" or whatever you prefer. From the Filter menu select Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur.

The Gaussian Blur Dialog Box

Depending on the size of your image, you will need to adjust the amount of blur (the radius) so that the image just loses its details. It's best if you have the preview box checked. Once you've got your number (remember it for later), click OK. 

At This Point, You've Gone Too Far

The blur is too much, and the best way to get it to behave is to reduce its opacity. With your blur layer active, reduce its opacity to 50% or a value you feel strikes a good balance between improvement and reality.

Layer Settings

Immediately, the image will look much better. The problem is that we've blurred the entire image when all we really want to blur is portions of the skin. So our next task is to select just the skin.

Select the Skin Only

With our blanket blur applied, we must now get to work selecting just the skin so we can build a layer mask. Click on the layer below our blurred layer to make that active. 

With a selection tool active (I use the rectangular marquee tool), select a portion of skin on the cheeks that isn't blown out with a shine or darkened by a shadow. You want to select a sample of skin from each cheek and the chin.

To select multiple regions, you'll need to (after your first selection) make use of the shift key to add to your existing selection.

Now that these regions are selected, we will tell Photoshop to select similar pixels to the ones we've selected. To do this, go to the Select menu and choose Similar.

Select Similar

At this point, it will likely select more than you had intended. That's OK. We'll make use of the lasso tool to deselect (using the Option [Mac] or Alt [Windows] key) regions that should not be blurry.  See the video below for how this is done.

Once the selection contains skin only, we need to feather the selection the same value that you used when you set the blur radius. From the Select menu, choose Select → Modify → Feather and enter the same value you used when you applied the Gaussian blur filter.

Click OK and you'll see your selection will become "smoother" or feathered.

In the layers panel, select the layer on which you applied the Gaussian blur. Click on the button at the bottom of the layers panel with the white rectangle and black circle in the middle. This is the layer mask button.

Layers Panel

Modify Your Mask

With your layer mask active and a soft brush, select black for your foreground color. Set your opacity to 50% and begin painting the areas that still need to "come back into focus." This usually includes things like: eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, smile lines, and mouth.

This step is where we bring back the realistic appearance of our subject. Use your best judgement about how real or authentic your subject appears.

Prefer Watching Your Tutorials?

Enjoy the video below where we cover the above steps in detail: