Hide the sketches?

This will be the first of many photoshop tutorials I will be posting on this blog.

If you are into web design or photoshop, follow me on Twitter at @TylerGoss.

The first tutorial will show you how to airbrush the photo of a person’s face to remove acne, wrinkles, and anything else on their skin you don’t want.

So we will start with this image of a girl.  You can see the pores, wrinkles, and some spots on her face.

The first step is to remove any visible dots from her face.  You will do this by using the Healing Brush Tool, it looks like a little band aid.  You want your cursor/circle/brush to be just slightly bigger than the spot on the person’s face.  Click on the spot, and it will magically disappear! This tool takes the colors/patterns right around where you click and clones that into the area you just clicked on.  So when using this healing brush tool you’ll need to make sure to have at least a little area of skin around where you’re clicking, otherwise it may clone some hair or clothing depending on what is around.

Now we are ready to airbrush.

There are several steps to this process.

1. Duplicate the layer containing the photograph of the girl.

2. Select the duplicate layer, and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

3. Choose a Radius that is high enough to remove pores and wrinkles, but as low as possible to maintain as much detail as possible.

4. With the blurred layer still selected, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. This filter will give our skin a little more of a ‘skin’ look, with some texture to it, so we don’t end up with a completely plastic face look. Make sure Uniform and Monochromatic are selected. You will only need a very small amount percentage. It will probably be somewhere around 2 or 3%. Just enough to add the slightest amount of texture.

It should look something like this.

5. Next, with the blurred layer still selected, go up to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All. Suddenly all our beautiful work disappears. This is okay because we just hid it. Now comes the fun part.

6. Choose your Brush Tool. Make sure the foreground color of your brush tool is white. Go up to the settings at the top and change your brush opacity to somewhere around 33%. Make sure you have selected the layer mask that is linked to your blurred layer, not the layer itself. The layer mask will look like a black box, make sure to click on that first. Once you have done so, zoom in on an area where there is a wrinkle or pore you don’t want to see anymore. Repeatedly click and drag your brush across the wrinkle/pore/blemish, and PRESTO it begins disappearing! We use an opacity of about 33% because this gives you the freedom to vary how much or little you hide/show as your airbrush over their face. Now you want to be careful to preserve the details of their eyes, edges of facial elements (like their nose) and mouth and teeth. Just airbrush the skin. Continue airbrushing all over the face until you are satisfied!

Essentially what we are doing is creating an airbrush mask to go over their face. If you were to hide the original layer you started with, you should get something like this. This is the mask we have now created to go on top of their face.

You should now have a beautifully smooth-skinned face that looks like this.

And here is the before/after photo so you can see the difference.

Have fun!