Smooth and brighten in separate passes and the result looks far more natural. Surface Blur evens out the skin, a mask brings back the eyes and hair, Curves lifts the tone, Selective Color takes out the yellow cast, and finally you reduce noise and sharpen. Online PS covers the whole set.
1
Duplicate the background and apply Surface Blur
- Duplicate the Background layer in the Layers panel (Ctrl+J) to get "Layer 1".
- Choose Filter > Blur > Surface Blur, set Radius to about 10-15 pixels and Threshold to about 15-25 levels. Check the preview: skin texture should mostly disappear while the edges stay. Spots and fine lines on the skin get blurred out evenly at this point.
- The big advantage of Surface Blur is that it blurs the skin while keeping edges, so you avoid the mask-like look of over-blurring.
Note: radius and threshold depend on the image size — those numbers are only a starting point. Begin low and work your way up.
2
Add a mask to recover key detail
- Click "Add layer mask" at the bottom of the Layers panel to give Layer 1 a white mask.
- With a soft black brush at 50% opacity, paint over the eyes, eyebrows, lips, hair edges and nostrils — anywhere that has to stay sharp — so the original detail underneath shows through.
- Watch the brush size and pressure so you don't cross the contour. Using a mask well is the key to avoiding a "plastic face".
Tip: black in a mask hides the current layer and reveals the one below. Press X at any time to swap the foreground color to white and restore anything you painted by mistake.
3
Lift the skin tone with Curves
- Click the Curves icon in the Adjustments panel to create a Curves adjustment layer.
- Pull the midpoint of the curve up slightly to brighten everything. If the skin looks yellow, switch to the Red channel and lift the red curve a little to add red and warm the skin.
- On the Curves mask, paint black over the background or any area that shouldn't be brightened, so only the skin is affected. Curves is the sharpest color tool you have — used well, it gives precise control over brightness.
4
Brighten the skin with Selective Color
- Create another Selective Color adjustment layer.
- In the Colors dropdown choose "Reds", reduce Black (about -10%) and reduce Yellow (about -5%) so the red areas read brighter.
- Choose "Yellows", again reduce Black (about -10%) and pull Yellow down slightly (about -5%) to lift yellowish skin.
- Choose "Whites", reduce Black (about -5%) to clean up the highlights.
- As before, use a mask to control where it applies so only the skin is affected. Selective Color keeps the brightening natural instead of washing the face out.
Note: keep the moves small. Nudge the sliders and use a mask so eyeshadow and lip color aren't affected.
5
Reduce noise and sharpen the detail
- Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E to stamp the visible layers into "Layer 2".
- Choose Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise with Strength around 8 and Preserve Details around 60% to clean up the remaining grain.
- Finally use Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask: Amount about 80%, Radius 1.0 pixel, Threshold 2, to add definition to the eyes and eyebrows.
- A stamped layer merges the effect of every visible layer, which makes the final overall pass much easier.
Tip: reduce noise first, then sharpen — you get a cleaner, crisper result.
6
Fine-tune the overall color
- Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and lower the overall saturation slightly, or adjust just the reds, to keep the skin natural.
- You can also use Color Balance to tweak shadows and highlights so the whole image sits together.
- Check the mask edges at the end and fix anything unnatural with a soft black brush. Then merge the visible layers and save in the format you need.
Tips
- Smoothing and brightening both need restraint — overdo it and the face stops looking real. Keep a mask handy to control the strength.
- Work at 100% view while you retouch so you can confirm the skin texture hasn't been blurred away.
- If the image is very high resolution, scale the values in these steps up accordingly.
- For more online resources visit www.zaixianps.cc for practical tutorials and tools.