creating a skin smoothing filter like digital gem

[dingothefox]

I need to create a filter that would do exactly what the digital gem airbrush pro plug-in by kodak does:
http://asf.com/products/plugins/airpro/pluginAIRPRO/
Essentially it smoothes skin but keeps detail. That filter is what my client wants, and these are portraits with 10 minute retouching with the filter applied at the end, FYI.
Thanks!

[Jack The Ripper]

Maybe i dont understand, are you asking somebody to build you a filter that does the same thing as the $100 plug-in does?

[0lBaldy]

dingothefox, Welcome to RetouchPRO Hope you enjoy your stay here, have fun!

Kent Christiansen's Skin Fix @ atncentral.com might do the trick... (no cute little sliders And prolly does not do it "Exactly"... but easy to use and free)..
A set of actions for smoothing skin. Take your pick.. (I use the second one "Paint Soft Skin" most of the time)
The first action 'Basic skin fix' is quick and easy and utilizes a method laid out in the dpr retouch forum by *isteve who found it by accident. It involves using the high pass filter, inverted and set to soft light. Kent added a layer mask to reveal details in eyes, lips, and other areas.
The second action also employs the Gaussian blur along with the high pass filters which tends to brighten up the effects of the Gblur. By putting the original background on top of the layer with those filters, one can 'paint' in the softness and use brush opacity to determine how soft a look one wants to achieve. This and the last action has subsequent layers beyond skin smoothing for contrast, color toning and cloning and healing, although one can stop at any point.
The third action is similar to the first in that it employs the high pass, invert, soft light scheme, where you paint in sharpness instead of softness which the action creates, but like the second action, it adds contrast and color adjustments and clone/healing capabilities.

[url]http://www.atncentral.com/zip/KentC_skinfix_v1.ZIP[/url

[garibaldi]

Originally Posted by dingothefox

I need to create a filter that would do exactly what the digital gem airbrush pro plug-in by kodak does:
http://asf.com/products/plugins/airpro/pluginAIRPRO/
Essentially it smoothes skin but keeps detail. That filter is what my client wants, and these are portraits with 10 minute retouching with the filter applied at the end, FYI.
Thanks!

Cool, let us know how it works out.

[dingothefox]

jack the ripper
No, I am not asking for someone to build me a filter, sorry I was not clear. I just wanted to know what that filter was really doing. I thought it might be possible to build my knowledge of photoshop and not buy the stupid filter.

OlBaldy
Thank you for the welcome - I suppose I should have introduced myself first. I'm used to the more anonymous forums, and hardly frequent them. But I like this one, and can see it is a community.

Thank you sooo much for all the good info. Before reading your post I tried CSpringer's skin repair action, and that seemed good. The stops allowed me to do some retouching. But I will try all your suggestions, to get to know better what my options are. Thanks for explaining it to me, need to dissect that info now.

garibaldi
will do.