Eliminating Skin Blemishes

[Doug Nelson]

One technique is to use Gaussian blur on the entire image at just enough radius to make the blemish disappear. Take a snapshot, then undo the blur. Point your history brush at the snapshot, and with a small, soft brush, paint out the blemishes. Use cautiously, and gently, otherwise you'll end up with little "perfect" spots surrounded by natural skin texture.

You can also experiment with blend modes, perhaps even leaving the actual blemishes but painting them the color of the surrounding skin. This more 'naturalistic' approach may or may not please your clients.

[Jakaleena]

I love this technique and use it a lot, but I use Dust & Scratches instead of Gaussian blur so that I can have Threshold as well as Radius. Balancing the two allows you to cover blemishes while leaving skin texture.

[Mosha]

[QUOTE=Doug Nelson]. Point your history brush at the snapshot, and with a small, soft brush, paint out the blemishes.


What do you mean by "Point your history brush at the snapshot"....

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Mosha,

if you go to your history palette, notice that there is a small square to the left of each history state, click on this and a small brush will appear, this sets the state from which your history brush tool will take its information.

In this case, click to the side of the blurred state (the snapshot), and the history brush will paint in blurredness in the areas you want i.e. on the skin blemishes.

[Mosha]

One technique is to use Gaussian blur on the entire image at just enough radius to make the blemish disappear. Take a snapshot, then undo the blur. Point your history brush at the snapshot, and with a small, soft brush, paint out the blemishes. Use cautiously, and gently, otherwise you'll end up with little "perfect" spots surrounded by natural skin texture.

You can also experiment with blend modes, perhaps even leaving the actual blemishes but painting them the color of the surrounding skin. This more 'naturalistic' approach may or may not please your clients.

Let's see if I understood this, after pointing my history brush to the snapshot (now I know how), without selecting the hole snapshot or the I just select the brush tool and start painting....no specific color selected? nor opacity or flow or blending mode?...

Sorry I guess I am too much of a rookie

[Doug Nelson]

History brush doesn't have a color, but the blend modes and opacities, etc., are open for experimentation.

[Mosha]

Thanks everybody.....

[edgework]

If you think about it, blemishes are really a color problem. You have the natural color of skin, and then the (usually) darker, redder color of blemishes. If you're tempted to try and paint out the blemishes, try this method first, as it eliminates none of the skin texture.

I sample the color of a representative blemish, and sample the color of the surrounding skin. Precision isn't absolutely necessary. Then I make an adjustment layer with curves. In each channel I add a mid-point and plug in values from each sample: input value from the blemish, output value from the skin tone. Fill the layer with black. Now, using the brush and variable size and opacity levels, paint just as if you were painting color onto the blemishes, but instead, paint white into the mask. The curves distribute the color change over a broad range, so you will find that the results are pretty accurate even when the tones vary in darkness and hue.

Once I've gone as far as this technique allows, I'll copy merge to a new layer and smooth out any remaining irregularities with the healing brush. The result is very smooth skin with all the original texture.