Perfect Skin tones In photoshop

Have a picture where you absolutely have to remove a hideous blemish or just even out oily/ shiny skintone? No problem! Follow these easy tips.

1. The easiest way to remove them is the Cloning Stamp. Click on the tool’s icon, hold the Alt key or option for mac and click on a skin area near the spot you want to remove. Let the Alt (option) key go and now click on the spot. It’ll be covered by the skin area you just picked . I suggest using a brush size similar to the size of the spot you want to remove, and also lowering the opacity value to 60% or so to get more realistic results.
2. reflections
   Close-ups sometimes show light reflections, especially on the forehead and nose. Removing them is as easy as removing spots: grab the Cloning Stamp and work the same as for step 1, making sure that this time the brushes mode is set to “Darken” instead of normal.
3. Smoothing the skin
   After removing blotches and reflections, it’s time for smoothing . Press Ctrl+J to duplicate the background layer and with the new layer active, go to Filter > Noise > Median. After thar reduce the layer’s opacity to around 50%. This will blur the image a good bit and make the skin look even smoother.

4. The last thing
   The Median filter does a good job on skin but blurs out important subjects such as the eyes and hair that we want to be sharp so the image doesnt look cartoony. Add a layer mask to the background layer copy and with a black brush, start painting all over the areas you want to sharpen again.Or...Merge all visible layers and then use the history brush tool.

   See Its really not that bad...it just takes some time and dedication. The more you do it the better you'll get at it. It takes some experimentation as well..not all pictures are the same...for some you may spend minutes, others hours. Just stick with it....heres my before and after of Devon Aoki with light work to knock down some of her freckles and shine. Please View Full Size

   Before
   After