Skin Smoothing, Highlights, and Shadows

I decided to make a really quick tutorial on just a couple things.. Skin smoothing, which is really simple and great for quick edits, and Highlights/Shadows using curves adjustment layers. Please excuse my horrible video, I haven't quite mastered making them yet lol. If there is anything I messed up on, doesn't make sense, or if you just have a question, feel free to contact me :) Hope this helps!

Step by Step

Skin Smoothing

After you've cropped your pic and gotten rid of those pesky lines you get if you have shadows on:

1. Hit D to set your foreground color to black and background to white.


2. Right under your foreground/background color, click the Quick Mask button or just hit the Q key.


3. Grab your brush tool (B) and paint over the area that you want to smooth. Make sure you do not paint over areas with detail such as eyes, eyebrows, mouth, etc. If you see red paint, you're doing it right. If you got it anywhere it doesn't need to be, hit X to switch your foreground color to white and paint over to erase.


4. When you have the desired area covered, click the Quick Mask button (or Q) again, which will select everything except the red. Go up to the Select menu and click on Inverse. This makes all the red paint a selection.


5. Make your selection a new layer by hitting Command or Control + J or going to the Layers menu and selecting New>Layer Via Copy.


6. Now go to the Filter menu.. Blur>Surface Blur... The settings will vary depending on your picture's resolution, so just play around with the sliders until it looks the way you want.

Highlights & Shadows

On your right toolbar, you should see an Adjustments tab. If you don't, go up to the Window menu and make sure there is a check mark beside "Adjustments".

1. In the Adjustments tab, there is a button that looks like a graph with a curve on it. Click it to make a new Curves layer. Remember to rename the layers so you can keep track of what you are doing. For example, Face highlights, Face shadows, Arm highlights, etc.


2. When you make a new Curves layer, a Properties tab will pop up. For highlights, drag the curve up to make the image lighter. Then hit I or Invert button. For shadows, drag the curve down to make it darker. Then Invert that layer as well.


3. Hit D to set your foreground/background color.


4. Grab your brush tool, set it to 0% hardness and about 10-15% opacity.


5. To paint highlights, click your highlights layer in the sidebar, then start painting on your image.


6. To paint shadows, click your shadows layer in the sidebar, then starting painting on your image.

Again, you can have multiple layers, your brush color needs to be to be white, and if you need to erase anything, set your brush color to black and erase.

Here is my finished quick edit using these techniques.. I just brought out the highlights that are already on the skin, eyes, and lips and added subtle details and shadows. You can do much much more! Hope this helps :)

Avatar Credits

• Hair: Hyori - Alice Project


• Skin: Jen (Medium, Natural) - League


• Eyes: Aquilius Eyes (Anya) - Aphotic Gloom


• Eyeliner: Lovely Line06 - My UglyDorothy


• Piercing: not released - Crash Republic


• Teeth: Small Gap - Medley


• Lipgloss: Elly Juicy Gloss - Pink Fuel