Quick Retouch: Smooth Skin

Quick Retouch: Smooth Skin

Everyone wants to look attractive in photos. Silky-smooth skin is a tiny detail that helps to achieve precisely that.

Step 1

Open an image, preferably a portrait photograph that you would like to retouch in Pixelmator.

Step 2

Create a blurred overlay for the image to help smooth the skin. First, choose Layer > Duplicate to duplicate your image layer. Then choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Amount to approximately 35 and click OK to apply the filter.

Step 3

Since the smooth overlay is required for the facial skin only, it’s necessary to erase everything on the blurry overlay apart from the skin (in our case, the background and hair). To do that, first click to select the Eraser Tool (E) in the Tools palette. Click to select a regular soft brush at any size in the Brushes palette (View > Show Brushes) and use the Eraser Tool (E) to delete the entire area around the skin.

Tip: In order to quickly change the diameter of a brush, use the Left Bracket ([) or Right Bracket (]) keys on your keyboard.

Step 4

For more precise editing, first turn off the original layer of the image you’re applying the effect to (in our case, “Relaxing”) by deselecting its checkbox in the Layers palette. Hiding the main image layer makes it easier to edit the blurry overlay. Then change the Opacity of the Eraser Tool to approximately 15-20% in the Tool Options bar (View > Show Tool Options) and drag over the darker edges around the skin to erase them.

Step 5

To accentuate the facial features (such as eyes, eyelids, nose, lips), first turn the main image layer back on. Then increase the Opacity of the Eraser Tool (E) to approximately 70% and simply drag it over the facial features to delete the blurry overlay selectively.

Step 6

For even more precise results, turn off the main image layer and continue using the Eraser Tool (E) to erase the darker edges around the facial features. Also, in order to make the entire skin overlay softer, reduce the Opacity of the Eraser Tool to 10-15% and drag over the entire area.

Step 7

Turn on the main image layer again to see the results. If the smooth overlay looks too artificial, reduce the Opacity of the blurry layer to approximately 80%.

The blurry face overlay not only smoothes the appearance of the skin but also hides wrinkles and makes a person’s skin look much younger. Once you’ve learned to retouch skin, feel free to experiment with different images.

© Pixelmator Team Ltd.