This is just a small crop of the whole image. I want to see what you talented people can do. Also, could you give a brief description of the technique you used? I have more pics of her, and I would like to find a good method to retouch them without getting rid of all of the freckles.
( I am not afraid of a little work - I realize this will take more than filters)

Your help is greatly appreciated!

just a quick 45 second fix... selected the red channel copied pasted to new layer blend mode to luminosity mask out hair. small amount of patch tool on darker blemishes on face. To keep more of the freckles just reduce the opacity of the layer to your taste. one other step i forgot to mention use a noise reduction filter on the red channel ie noiseware neat image or noise ninja. three good ones.

Ro's Quick Degrunge technique found at the link below is perfect for what you want to do. I used settings of High Pass = 3 and Gaussian Blur = 1.
By using a soft brush at low opacity you have a very wide lattitude of selective application or apply the full effect to the layer and reduce the opacity.
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213
Regards, Murray

I did quick two passes of targeted curves, taking only a one sample each time & applied it to all freckles, no blurring no “plugins”. If you work with small areas & take more samples you could get much better results.

I did quick two passes of targeted curves, taking only a one sample each time & applied it to all freckles, no blurring no “plugins”. If you work with small areas & take more samples you could get much better results.

This is wonderful- very believable. Could you please elaborate on the curves technique. I only use curves for contrast/exposure. I have read about a technique where you sample a color and then adjust the curves accordingly. Is that the technique you're talking about? I need to find that book.....

Take a sample of a freckle & then another one next to it. Plug the numbers of the “good” sample in the curve layer, mask the curve layer & then paint white on the mask to apply the curve layer to the freckles. I use very low opacity 4-7 would do it.

Chillin, you did an awesome job and that is a great way to restore a speciaql image or two. However, I-Inspire indicated that there are many of these images and your method would appear to be about as time consuming as the Clone tool or Healing brush, even though it produced better results than blurring. People need to decide on the trade-off between time and quality.
Regards, Murray

BTW, for this image, the Patch tool in Photoshop CS2 or CS3 works very well. You can use it on a dupliacte layer and adjust opacity.
Regards, Murray

Oh, If you in a hurry use Portraiture --45 seconds.

Thank You all for your help!
I am learning so much, and I am improving everyday. There is no substitute for an experienced mentor...

(imo) Portraiture won this round>the time consuming curves technique.......