Quick Tip: How to Smooth Skin Without Losing Texture in PhotoshopRainer Hietsch on May 26th 2010 with 176 CommentsTutorial Details

Program: Adobe Photoshop

Difficulty: Beginner

Estimated Completion Time: 20 - 30 Minutes

Download Source Files

Source files for this tutorial are available to Premium members. 

Get a Premium Membership

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

There are several ways to smooth skin in Photoshop. All to often, however, skin can

appear too smooth, fake, and synthetic. Today I will demonstrate a straightforward

technique to help you smooth skin fairly quickly while preserving the texture of the

pores. Let’s get started!

Final Image PreviewTake a look at the final image that we will be creating.

Original ImageBefore we begin, let’s take a look at the original image.

Step 1First, open your image and duplicate your background layer. Simply drag the layer

onto the new layer icon in the bottom right of the layer palette. Now set the blending

mode of this newly created layer to "Vivid Light."

Step 2Now, let’s invert this layer. Do this by pressing Cmd + I or Image > Adjustments >

Invert. Then, apply a Gaussian Blur by selecting Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Applying a blur filter to an inverted picture will make it look shaper. Use the slider

until you can see the pores on her face.

Step 3Now let smooth the skin! Go to Filter > Other >High Pass. Move the slider until you

are happy with the smoothing. You may notice some ghosting and other weird stuff

around the eyes – just ignore it for now. Concentrate on the cheeks, forehead and

nose.

Step 4Almost done! Create a new mask for the layer and fill it with black to hide the image.

Switch your color to white, select the mask and start drawing on the skin with a soft

brush. Start at the cheeks, move over to the forehead, the nose and stop on the

chin. If the effect is too strong for your liking, just lover the opacity of the brush and

you’re good to go!

`Quick Tip: Remove a Person From a Photo With Photoshop CS5’s Content Aware FeatureMartin Sitar on May 28th 2010 with 154 CommentsTutorial Details

Program: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended

Difficulty: Beginner

Estimated Completion Time: 10 Minutes

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

With the launch of the new Adobe Suite of programs comes the long awaited Adobe

Photoshop CS5. Packed with new features to speed up your workflow it truly is the

most advanced edition of Photoshop to date. One of the new features we will be

looking at today is called Content Aware. This feature allows you to quickly fill in a

selection with surrounding content making it look like a part of the original image. In

this case we will choose to remove a person from a photo, this can be done in less

than five minutes. With the additional image enhancements this tutorial will take you

less than 10 minutes to complete.

Original Image

Before we begin, download the image that we will be working with. As you can see,

there are two individuals in this photo. In today’s tutorial, we will use Photoshop

CS5′s Content Aware Feature to remove the man on the left.

Step 1Using the content aware tool on different images produces different results. An

image with a gradient background such as the sky in this image is quite tricky to

work with. Open beach.jpg in Photoshop.

Step 2We are extracting the person on the left from this photo. Using the Pen Tool, (P)

Begin by making a path around the subject. The nice thing about using content

aware is that you do not have to be exact when making a selection. In fact, do your

best not to cut too close to the subject.

Notice in the image below how far I am drawing the path from the subject. Try to

keep this distance all the way around. If you go too close, Content Aware will take

pixels from the subject. If you cut too far it will take pixels from the woman on the

right.

Step 3Once you complete the path around the subject, turn it into a selection. This can be

done by right clicking on the path and selecting Make Selection.

A dialog box will pop-up, make sure the feathering is set to 0px. Leave all other

options as they are. Click OK.

Step 4Now we have an active selection around our subject. In this step we will make the

subject disappear from the image using Content Aware Fill. To do this, go to Edit >

Fill.

A dialog box will pop-up, make sure the Content Aware option is selected. Blending

mode is set to normal and the opacity is at 100%. Hit OK.

You can cancel the selection at any time by making another selection or just clicking

anywhere else on the page with any selection tool.

Step 5In this step we will remove some of the other artifacts in the image using the same

process. The content aware tool did miss a spot where the subject’s foot originally

was. To do this, draw a rectangle around the area using the rectangle selection tool.

And use the content aware fill as we have done in the previous steps.

Now let’s remove the people towards the right of the image. Create a rectangle

selection around them and use the steps we just demonstrated to remove them.

Step 6 (Optional)Using the Crop Tool (C) lets crop the image so that the focus is drawn to the woman

jumping. To do this, just crop out an area of the image that you would like to keep.

Beware of the shadow that is left behind from the person that we have removed. You

can use the Content Aware feature to remove this shadow but I have decided to crop

it out altogether.

Click the checkmark at the top to keep this area. Photoshop will discard the content

that is outside of your crop area.

Step 7 (Optional)In this step we will enhance the photo by giving it a more vibrant look. The colors

currently appear somewhat dull. There are many ways to accomplish this but we will

use Color Curves. To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Curves, (Cmd + M). A

dialog box will pop-up and we will select each of the channels, R, G, B and work on

them separately. Select the Red channel from the dropdown menu.

We are going to make two points on the graph. One in the bottom of the top right

square, and one in the top of the bottom left square.

Once you have made these points, make sure you enter the values for each. For the

top right point the Output value is 199, and the input value is 185. For the bottom

point the values are 56 and 68, respectively. You can play around with these setting

and adjust them to whatever you feel is appropriate. Repeat this for each of the

colors, Green and Blue.