Attached is a sample photo that I enhanced to exaggerate the pores, wrinkles, freckles etc. I shot this with a 50mm lens with some pretty harsh lighting that really brings out any skin flaws. And I also tweaked the contrast to make things challenging.

Not very flattering at all! Now with all of your skin manipulation techniques, let's see what can be done to refine the image and create a natural, less harsh looking face if possible.

You decide what level of processing should be done. I haven't started myself as of yet...I was spending time making it look challenging!

*** Actually I just finished mine as attached..

Good Luck!

Jamz..

Concentrating on the eyes. Softening with inverted highpass filter in overlay mode, plus diffuse on highlights.
(added) plus toning down the reds and a little dark vignette.

Stayed with a natural but 'different' look ....

Used Imagenomic Portraiture Plugin, some Dodging around the eyes, the Spot Healing brush and Nik Skylight filter.

Some selective soft focus, especially to soften hair and lips
Inverted highpass overlay
A small amount of healing
A little dodge and burn
Cloning uneven edges around mouth
Final Colour/Levels adjustment

here is mine

softened skin,
removed blemishes
softened wrinkles
brightened eyes

wanted to keep her looking the same only refreshed

Overlaid color mask at 10% Lavender; Soft blur, tweaked healing brush over various parts of the photo. I prefer a younger look (edited lines around mouth and eyes).

CSpringer's Skin Repair, PWL and Digital Grey Card actions at www.atncentral.com

Hi there

Degrunge...screen soften... light and darken layer spot painting.

Butch

Nice work Butch - especially on the eyes. I use degrunge quite often (because I'm not very good at Dodge & Burn). I little trick I use to keep the result more natural is to blend the degrunged version with the original. I took yours and blended it with 50% original. You can use more or less by adjusting the opacity slider. This works very well on the "more mature" subjects.

byRo Degrunging, highkey techniques, soft focus play, selective painting away wrinkles, and lots of selective smudging. Still not perfect and I missed a lot, but my goal is to try to keep it looking natural. I also did some clone fills around the hair (that gap was killing me). Also a few other GIMP tricks (dup Overlay set to saturation for instance). Yes all done in GIMP. Used Amphisoft Convolution Shaman set to Highpass for the highpass filter needed for byRo Degrunging (usually I used blur Grain Extract Overlay, but this filter does a better Highpass filter then that). :)

I copied and pasted the red channel into a new layer and set it to multiply, took the opacity down as well. Merged layers and duplicated the background, used Gaussian blur and lowered the opacity. Used a mask to bring back the eyes, hair and lips.

Boredom set in, so I had an extreme go at this one

Took another look at mine, it looked flat so i adjusted curves and color. think this looks better

here is mine

softened skin,
removed blemishes
softened wrinkles
brightened eyes

wanted to keep her looking the same only refreshed

Beautiful picture

I just downloaded it to give it a try myself. Sometime soon I hope.

My first try. :)

My version. Naturally I'm an airbrusher. I think everyone knows that if they've even met me even once, lol. My approach is to airbrush a result that is like makeup. Women do their faces with makeup and so that is my approach, my style, my preoccupation. I do not try to do otherwise.

This is not a photograph anymore in the pure sense of the term so please don't evaluate it in photographic terms. It's been changed from that. I would hope that the result appears as if the complexion was done by a makeup artist. In this case, me, and in this case, digitally. Thank you.

I do not use blur, not even one bit. It is all the airbrush tool in Photoshop 5.5.

...Pierre...

oh so small, pierre

I did a save for web example to make it bigger but a smaller file size and still it had to be reduced to this size. I really didn't want it that small either. I'll upload it to my gallery in a larger format. Thanks.

Ok, it's here and larger:

http://www.retouchpro.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=4907&cat=500

That's my gallery. Thanks.

I cleared the skin and reduced wrinkles with the patch and clone tools. I used selective color to brighten her hair and cloned in some hair to fill areas. I Used Surface Blur and layer masking to smooth the skin. I Added a layer for highlights and another for shadows and used a Soft Light blending mode.

better late than never ;)
here's my version. Used a lot of spot healing, cloning and dodge/burn as well as the patch tool. Bit of high pass sharpening on the eyes and a softening action on the skin, and a custom CMYK curve finished it off.

A Lady with perfectly smooth skin but with old wiry hair? Something doesn't look right with most of these retouches. Just a humble opinion.

Use Skin technique and hue/sat taking red slider to the right to move the red tones to more yellow. Skin technique is simply duplicating layer, then dust and scratches with top slider moved to the point the bad skin blurs and the bottom slider to gradually add texture back in. Add a layer mask and inverse. Take a soft brush at 30 opacity and paint back in the skin being careful not to enter the eyes and other areas.

To Nicky3,
Considering that you don't have any images posted feel free to finish the hair yourself, or, send me $25 with your Paypal and I'll finish the hair. Thank you.
...Pierre...

Heres my attempt.
Steve