How to Smooth Skin in Photoshop

I have decided to share my secret to always looking flawless in my Facebook profile pictures. I will be using Photoshop CC, but the features used can be found in previous versions of Photoshop CS.

Let's start with a picture of me that could use a little retouching. As always, you can click on the image to view it larger. I have bolded the important parts if you are not a fan of reading.

While I could probably get away with only using the healing brush tool, let's go a little further than that.

Start by duplicating your background layer. This can be done by either right-clicking on the layer and selecting "duplicate" or by selecting the layer and pressing ctrl+J.

Under the filters menu, go to "Blur" and then select "Surface Blur". These are the settings that I have chosen to use. My image is very large, so you may want to choose a smaller radius for smaller images. You want the skin to appear smoother, but the goal is not to remove all imperfections just yet. 

Next, add a mask to the blurred layer and, with a black brush, go over areas of detail like the lips, eyebrows, etc. You could also simply use the eraser, but a mask will allow you to easily edit any mistakes you might make and leaves you open to change your mind about what to delete. Be sure to go over areas that are not skin like hair and the background.

Deselect your layer mask and select the image itself under the layers panel. In other words, make sure that the grey edges are around the thumbnail of the image and not the mask.

Now it is time to use the healing brush. Using a brush that is slightly larger than the largest imperfection that you wish the remove, set the hardness to zero. Again, my image is rather large, so my brush size might be too large for the image that you are retouching.

Hold down the alt key and select a patch of skin that is smooth and close in color to the area that you wish to cover. If there is no smooth skin around the area, you can try use a cheek as the source and see if Photoshop will match the color on its own. For removing redness from skin, I suggest using a color balance adjustment layer with a mask over the red areas.

If you wish to retain some of the natural texture of the skin, you can remove some of the larger imperfections from the background layer and lower the opacity of the blurred layer.

And here we have the full-size side-by-side comparison of before and after. 

A link back is always appreciated if you find this helpful in editing your photos.