Since the pre-digital era, glamour photos have been airbrushed by skilled photographers to remove imperfections on the skin. Now, with advance image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, airbrushing can easily be mimiced with realistic results. However, many airbrushing techniques removes too many details causing the skin to look plastic and unrealistic. In this tutorial, we'll teach you an effective Photoshop technique to simulate airbrushing without losing the texture.
First, go to the File menu and select Open to open a photo you would like to edit. Because we will be working with fine details, it is important that the image is a high resolution so that the details of the skin can be seen. The image I used is a high resolution 10 megapixel image with plenty of skin detail.
Step 2
In the next steps, we will be duplicating the layer twice and applying two filters to each of the new layers. Because the image I am working with is a large 31MB photo, processing the filters will be CPU intensive and slow. Before I continue to duplicate the layer, I’m going to use the Lasso tool to draw a selection of the skin and duplicate only that area. This will reduce the amount of pixels to work with and reduce the load on my computer. You don’t have to do this if you don’t need to. It may be helpful if you don’t have a fast computer with lots of RAM or if your image isn’t really large.
Step 3
Now, press Ctrl+J or open Layer menu and select Duplicate to duplicate the layer. Do this once more so that you have two layers. Now, rename the top layer to “High Pass” and the middle layer to “Low Pass”. As you may have guessed, on the High Pass layer, we’ll be applying a high pass filter and on the Low Pass layer, we’ll be applying a low pass filter.
Step 4
Lets work on the Low Pass layer first. In the Layers palette, click on the eye beside the High Pass layer to hide the layer and select the Low Pass layer that we will be working on.
I’m using the brush tool and have followed the steps up to here but when I try and use the brush nothing changes in the picture, even when at 100% I can’t see a difference, and when I put a red layer on above the high pass it is very very faint. Why is this and how do I fix it?
[...] used this airbrush tutorial to give the girl’s skin a blemish free look. http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-retouching/airbrushing-natural-smooth-skin/?s… Her skin was very red before i airbrushed it. I used high pass, low pass, surface blur filters. [...]
Step 7 – I cannot find the “apply image” tool in PSE 10 to do this step. Please help.
It’s under Image–>Apply Image
Right under Duplicate in the Duplicate Section of the Image tab
I’m using the brush tool and have followed the steps up to here but when I try and use the brush nothing changes in the picture, even when at 100% I can’t see a difference, and when I put a red layer on above the high pass it is very very faint. Why is this and how do I fix it?
Thanks work Magically, http://sarki2gumel.deviantart.com/art/Transformed2-351049073?ga_submit_new=10%253A1359357797
i cannot understand step 7
This is really helpful and so easy to understand for anyone.Thanks you!
This is an awful tutorial. I felt like I was going to rip my hair out. Definitely finding a new tutorial…
thank u so much ,,it helps me a lot