Ever wondered how come all models look so great in magazines? Watch this tutorial to find out. It’s more than just a makeup.

There are many tutorials on creating a SmoothSkin effect. They are all based on the same rule: separate the details like eyes, mouth and teeth from the rest of the image, and then apply different filters to smooth the skin out while keeping all the details sharp.

Here’s my way of achieving this effect. It doesn’t require any painting or selection drawing. It’s fully automated. However it may require a bit of tuning up after applying the effect to restore some details that might have been treated as a regular skin.

As a reference - here are other tutorials on this subject that I’ve found on the net.
http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut020.htm
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/smooth_skin/
http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Flat-Skin/6436

You can also download my action preset to fully automate the process, or you can redord your own action after watching this tutorial.

Download Actions: PolygonStudioActions.zip (Photoshop CS2)

After downloading unpack the file to whatever folder you like and double-click it. After that you should see new Action Set in your Photoshop Actions palette.

Photos used in this tutorial come from sxc.hu. By the time they were downloaded, they were licensed as royalty free, and were free to use in any way you like (standard restrictions). Just to make sure, go to sxc.hu right now, or just click here to read the Standard restriction agreement.