OK, as we know one of the retouching princiles is skin and inparticular softening, however i have this problem with my daughters image in that she has a lot of freckles and i would like to know what is the best way of softening the skin without too much effect on the frackles themselves.

This is a smaller image than the one i will be working on.

Amelia (http://www.pbase.com/axleuk/image/38411505)

Axle, I hate to mess with this beautiful young lady. Don't know exactly what you wanted. Think I went too far, but it's one approach. Any questions, ask.
kiska

Thats briliant, thanks.

I was worried that due to the amount of freckles, that any smoothing would be difficult without adversley affecting the freckle contrast.

You image is a little bit small, so i cant really see the detail, however from what i can see, you have done a terrific job.

I'm with slight tweaking to your methid, we will be onto a winner.

Many thanks for taking the time with this one.

Just keep the gaussian blur LOW, 1.5-2, on a duplicate layer. That way if it's still too much, you can lower the opacity. Good luck! Ooops. That blur was for 72 reso. You'll have to up it for 300. Experiment.

Beautiful young lady!!!!

I had a go at your picture and tried to soften it without compromising the freckles... I also brightened up her left eye ....

It might be too soft for you, though....

Axle, did you delete the picture? When I click on the link, pbase states that the picture is no longer available.

Try now Janet, not sure what happened but i got the same message to i sorted the link out. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Hi Axle, had a play with your picture as follows.

Duplicated background layer.
Extracted girl from duplicate layer.
Blurred background a little to isolate figure more.
Copied girl to new layer.
Blurred girl layer with Gaussian Blur 1 pix radius. Masked around eyes and mouth.
Selected freckles from 1st (unblurred) girl layer, copied and pasted to new layer above blurred girl in stack adjusted opacity of this layer.
New layer, painted in catchlights to left eye.
New layer colour mode, painted in whiteness to teeth and adjusted opacity for effect.

More difficult to describe than to do.

Thanks guys ( and gals ) for all your effort. I decided in the end, not to soften the skin as it would take away too much of the freckle definition, and to be honest, her skin is good anyways with not too mnay blemishes ( if any ).

I have submitted my retouch on PBase for you to look at.

Thanks again for the hard work you folk put in. Very much apprecuated.

Amelia (http://www.pbase.com/axleuk/image/38443995)