Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual

Skin Softeners

Your skin is your body's largest organ though not everyone gives it the respect it deserves. We sometimes forget to use sunblock, moisturizer, and so on. This section teaches you how to make skin look like it's really well cared for. You'll learn how to make it look soft and glowing, and even how to reduce lines and wrinkles, all without spending tons of money on anti-aging creams.

Selective Blur

One of the fastest ways to smooth skin is to give it a good dose of the Gaussian Blur filter (it's named for the gentleman who invented this blur method, Carl Gauss). This filter is often the only skin fixer you need, and it's faster than the Healing brushes you learned about earlier in this chapter. The beauty of this filter is that you can run it on a separate layer, lower its layer's opacity, and use a layer mask to apply it only where you need it (see Figure 10-14).

Figure 10-14. Just like Robitussin and duct tape, the Gaussian Blur filter can darn near fix anything. It made this woman's skin look nice and smooth by lessening the intensity of her freckles without removing them completely. You can also use this technique to create a "shallow depth of field" effect in which the background is blurry and your subject is in focus.

To soften skin, follow these steps:

1. Duplicate the Background layer.

   Press ⌘-J (Ctrl+J on a PC) to duplicate the Background layer. If you want to use a layer ...