Photoshop How To

Retouching skin tones in Photoshop can be intimidating to software novices. Do too much enhancement in Photoshop and your subject's skin will look plasticky and doll-like. Do too little skin correction and you might not be able to tell the difference between the before and after pictures.

Fortunately, software guru Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect has got you covered. In the below Photoshop tutorial, Dinda shows you "three super-fast ways to auto-repair skin" so your subject will shine. As an added bonus, he even throws in three skin correction Photoshop actions that you can download for free.

"Explore 3 automatic methods to repair and retouch skin instantly in Photoshop along with free actions to make the process even faster," Dinda says.

"In the first technique, we will learn the right way to use Neural Filter’s Skin Smoothing along with Masks and Photoshop Actions for a faster and higher quality result. For the second technique, we will use a classic Skin Softening method where we use advanced Blending Modes and Filters. And for the final method, we will take advantage of A.I.-based professional plugins."

Here are his three skin quick fixes with time-stamps of where you can find them in the 14-minute video at the bottom of this post. You can download his free skin repair actions here.

Method #1: Photoshop AI (1:09)

Tip: Make Actions Customizable (4:57)

Method #2: Classic Skin Softening (5:28)

Method #3: For the Best Results (8:10)

Recap: (12:28)

After you watch the below video, you should check out these two additional portrait photography tutorials on how to give faces a gorgeous "golden shine" effect and how to fix skin tones in less than a minute.