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Dan Rodney/4 min read

Smoothing Skin with Blending Modes

Smooth Skin via Blend Modes

1

Duplicate Background, Set to Lighten

Lighten only brightens beneath layer where the duplicate is darker.

2

Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur

Radius 5 px softens highlights independently.

3

Rename to 'blurred lighten' & Lower Opacity

Adjust opacity to taste — too much creates the dreaded airbrushed look.

4

Repeat with Darken for Shadows

Mirror the technique with a Darken-mode layer to soften dark patches.

Master Photoshop at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Photoshop Bootcamp covers retouching, compositing, color correction, and pro editing.

Learn how to enhance your Photoshop skills with this comprehensive tutorial covering topics like skin smoothing, adding natural-looking texture, and controlling the intensity of the smoothing effect.

Topics Covered in This Photoshop Tutorial:

Smoothing Skin, Blurring Highlights & Shadows Independently, Adding Texture for a Natural Look, Blending Modes

Exercise Preview

white shawl woman done

Exercise Overview

In this exercise, we’ll smooth out the texture of this woman’s skin, particularly in her forehead. This technique is powerful, but requires discretion to avoid the ’70s airbrushed pinup look (unless that’s what you’re after). When applied properly, you can achieve beautiful natural-looking results.

Smoothing the Skin

  1. From the Photoshop Adv Class folder, open WhiteShawlWoman.psd. There was no message about color management because this image is in Adobe RGB (which is the same as our RGB workspace). So this image is properly color managed.

  2. Save it as yourname-WhiteShawlWoman.psd.

  3. Duplicate the Background layer (Cmd–J (Mac) or CTRL–J (Windows)).

  4. Change the blending mode of your new layer to Lighten.

    You won’t see any visible change because Lighten only brightens pixels on layers beneath it if they’re darker than its own pixels.

  5. Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

  6. Set the Radius to 5 pixels and click OK.

    Now you’ll see some softening of the image.

  7. Rename the layer blurred lighten.

  8. Set the Opacity of this layer to about 60%.

  9. Duplicate this layer (Cmd–J (Mac) or CTRL–J (Windows)).

  10. Rename the duplicated layer blurred darken.

  11. Change its blending mode to Darken.

    The power of this technique is being able to control the blur effect in highlights and shadows separately. This combo more effectively mimics a camera’s diffusion filter.

  12. Experiment with the opacities of each layer to see how you can control the effect more than if you had just one blur layer. Even though the smoothing effect is applied to the whole, focus your attention on the skin. Later we’ll be masking away the smoothing effect in the areas where we don’t want it.

Adding Texture Back in

  1. The skin is certainly smoother, but it’s also a little unnatural looking. We can improve it by adding a bit of texture. Select the blurred darken layer so we can create a layer above it.

  2. Hit Cmd–Shift–N (Mac) or CTRL–Shift–N (Windows) and set the following:

    • Name it noise texture.
    • Set its blending mode to Overlay.
    • Check Fill with Overlay-neutral color.

    noise texture

    An Overlay layer adds contrast by:

    • Brightening wherever pixels are brighter than 50% neutral gray
    • Darkening wherever pixels are darker than 50% neutral gray

    So starting off with solid 50% neutral gray will produce no effect whatsoever, which is a good place to start!

  3. Click OK.

  4. With the noise texture layer still selected, choose Filter > Noise > Add Noise.

  5. Make sure that Gaussian is selected and check Monochromatic if it isn’t already.

  6. Enter an Amount around 2–5%. This will depend on the resolution of your file. Keep in mind that if you add a little too much, you can reduce the opacity of the layer afterwards.

  7. Click OK.

  8. Reduce the opacity of the noise texture layer as desired.

  9. Let’s group the three layers that comprise this effect so we can modify the entire effect at once.

  10. Shift–click the blurred lighten layer so the top three layers are highlighted.

  11. Go to Layer > Group Layers (Cmd–G (Mac) or CTRL–G (Windows)).

  12. Name the group smooth skin.

Controlling the Intensity of the Smoothing Effect

  1. Make sure the Group folder button is selected and if desired, adjust the group’s opacity until the smoothing effect looks right.

  2. To control where the smoothing effect is visible we’ll use a layer mask. We can approach this two ways. We can start by showing the smoothing everywhere, then mask away what we don’t want. However, our preferred method is to hide the smoothing everywhere, then paint it back in only where we want it. To do that, make sure the Group folder button is still selected and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.

  3. Use a soft edge white paintbrush on the layer mask to show the effect where desired. Adjust the opacity of the brush to control how much of the smoothing effect you bring back in.

  4. Save the file when done.

    TIP: If this is something you frequently need to do, the steps in this exercise would work well as an action. The action could make all the layers/groups and add the layer mask to hide the smoothing effect. All that would be left for you to do on each image would be to adjust the opacity of the layers and paint the smoothing effect back in where you want it.