It’s sometimes easy to underestimate the importance of a good tag and filtering process. If done right this can be a huge time saver. It’s also handy for archiving; when you return to these photos after weeks, months or years have passed you are immediately able to see the original tags you applied.

1. Loupe View
The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you’re in Loupe view of your photos. This allows you to easily view each individual photo as you scroll them. To do this, simply hit the E key on your keyboard, or go to View > Loupe. Now, starting with the first photo in your series, you can simply use the left and right arrow keys to scroll through the Filmstrip (the scrolling list of photos at the bottom of the screen).

2. Flags, Stars and Colors
Lightroom offers you several options to tag and filter your photos. One thing to keep in mind when sorting through these filtering options is whether or not the tag is global. If it is global, it will be recognized by Lightroom regardless of what folder, collection or catalog the photo resides in. If it’s not global, the tag you apply will only be visible within the folder or collection that you are viewing at the time.

• Flags – Quick and easy way to indicate whether a photo is to be kept or deleted. Not global.
  • Flagged (Hit P key) – Marks photo as a keeper
  • Unflagged (Hit U key) – Removes any previously applied tag.
  • Rejected (Hit X key) – Marks photo as rejected
• Stars (Hit 1-5 on keyboard, or 0 to remove stars) – Fairly straightforward way to indicate whether a photo is “meh” or if it’s “AWESOME”! Stars are globally recognized.
• Colors (Hit 6-9 on keyboard) – Nifty way to assign a group to a set of photos. For example, all Green photos need to be cropped, all Red photos need to be changed to black and white, etc. Colors are globally recognized as well.

One thing to keep in mind is that Photoshop can also recognize global tags. So, if you have just flagged a photo in Lightroom and opened in Photoshop for editing, when you save the photo it is automatically added to your Lightroom catalog but it will not retain the Flag that you had previously applied. Photoshop does retain all Star ratings and Color labels that you have applied, but not Flags.

3. Filtering Fun!
Now that all the “hard work” is done (bless your soul), it’s easy to use the filter options in the toolbar to display only certain sets of photos. Simply click on the filtering method of your choice to display only the photos with those tags.

Tagging and filtering has become the very first thing I do with my photos after they are imported. It’s especially useful if you are importing a large amount of photos at one time as it helps you narrow down the best photos to a manageable list.

Other articles in this series

• Adobe Lightroom Workflow – Part 1 – Importing Photos

Many people deal with white balance by simply setting their digital camera to Auto White Balance (AWB). While cameras do fairly well at achieving good white balance automatically, there are a few steps you can take to insure more accurate depiction of colors.

The absolute easiest way to get accurate white balance is incorporating a gray card into your workflow. With a gray card, you simply take a photo of the gray card in the lighting scenario you’re working with; you then have a solid reference point for middle gray, usually defined as 18% gray (though some claim that camera and light meters see closer to a 12% gray).

Get a Gray Card
My favorite gray cards are the WhiBal range of cards from RawWorkflow.com. When I first started practicing photography with a gray card, I got a 4×5″ card that didn’t fit in my camera bag so I always forgot to take it on location sessions. To remedy this, I picked up a card that I keep on my keychain for $18. Now I’ve got a handy gray card with me wherever I go. I simply setup the scene and then snap a photo of my subject/model holding up the keychain-sized gray card.

Balance It Out
After you’ve captured a gray card in your photo, it’s incredibly easy to set the white balance inside Photoshop. The easiest way is to open the photo inside Camera Raw.

Simply choose the White Balance Tool in Camera Raw (the eyedropper icon toward the top left corner of the window) and click on an area of the gray card.

As an experiment, I purposely messed up the white balance so that the gray was wasn’t anywhere near actual gray:

One click on the WhiBal gray card instantly corrects the color of the image:

This illustrates the effectiveness of the gray card and shows that it works even if your camera’s white balance setting was inaccurate.

This method works great with both RAW and JPEG images, so regardless of your shooting preference you can be sure to end up with accurate color through custom white balance with a gray card.

This isn’t a problem when it comes to printing your photos. In fact, the more pixels you have the better your printed photos will look. The problem arises when we just want to share these pictures on the web or email a few of them to a friend or relative. You see, the more pixels an image uses, the larger its file size will be. Large file sizes mean longer downloads for your friends and family, and can also be the reason why your emails won’t go through (many email servers won’t accept messages larger than 10mb).

So, we are often left with the task of resizing these images so that they are “web ready.” That is, reduced in dimension (how large they appear on screen) and in file size (how much room they take up on your hard drive). Resizing images is a simple task, but it can quickly become a boring and tedious task if you have more than just a few images to resize.

There are a couple of little known features in Photoshop, called Batches and Droplets, that allows us to perform an Action (or a series of Actions) on many photos at once. If you often edit hundreds of photos in a given month, this feature will save you hours of time.

Before we get into the details about automating Photoshop with Batches and Droplets, we need to take a quick look at Photoshop Actions. Actions are used to record anything you may do to an image, such as applying a favorite filter or resizing, and assigning it to a keyboard shortcut. For example, if you find yourself resizing your images to 800px wide and then applying the Unsharp Mask filter, you can create an Action to do these processes, and then execute them by simply pressing a key on your keyboard. You can record just one edit/process, or record many edits within a single Action.

Create a New Action in Photoshop

To create a new Action, click the New Action button within the Action window. If the Action window isn’t on your screen, click Window > Action from the main menu or press Alt + F9 (Windows) on your keyboard.

When you create a new Action, a dialog box will appear. You can choose where to save your action, what to name it (use a descriptive name) and what key or key combination to assign to the Action. Click Record when you’re ready to begin recording your new Action.

At this point, apply the edits that you routinely do to your image: resizing, applying filters, save to web, etc. Don’t worry about trying to do things quickly. Photoshop is only recording what you click, not how quickly you click around the screen. When you’re done, click the Stop Playing/Recording button in the Action window. Note: you’ll want to include saving the file as part of your Action if you intend to use the Action in a Batch or Droplet.

Now, anytime you want to apply that action to an image you’ve loaded into Photoshop, either highlight your Action and click the Play button, or simply press the key you assigned to the Action. Your edits will be made in the blink of an eye!

Edit Multiple Pictures with a Photoshop Batch

Now that you’ve seen how handy Actions can be, lets see how we can apply them on a large scale. You can apply any Action you’ve created to a Batch of photos, which can save you lots of tedious work.

To apply your Action to a Batch, click File > Automate > Batch from the main menu.

A new window will appear that shows all of the Batch settings you’ll configure. The most important settings are which Action to apply, where the images you want to edit are stored, and where to save the edited images. Note that you must apply a Batch to all photos within a folder. You cannot selectively apply the batch to particular images (but you can with a Droplet, which I’ll discuss in a moment).

Once you’ve configured your Batch, click OK at the top and sit back to watch the magic. Photoshop will apply your Action to every photo in the chosen folder and save them to the folder you indicated in the Batch settings.

Using a Photoshop Droplet to edit Multiple Pictures

A Droplet is simply a Batch that you’ve saved to your computer. When you set up a Droplet, you’re actually setting up a Batch job and then saving it. This creates a special Droplet icon that you can drag and drop a folder or selected image files onto. So, the next time you have lots of photos to edit, you can just drag and drop to the Droplet Icon and your job is done.

Creating a Droplet is very similar to creating a Batch job. Click File > Automate > Create Droplet from the menu.

From there, configure the droplet settings, which you’ll notice are nearly identical to the Batch setting you saw a few moments ago. The most obvious difference is that you must designate a place to save the Droplet icon, and that you won’t choose a folder that contains images you wish to edit (because you’re going to drag and drop the photos you wish to edit onto the Droplet icon).

When you’re done setting up the Droplet, click the OK button at the top of the window. You’ll find that a Droplet icon has been saved to where you’ve indicated. Now, any time you want to apply your common edits to one or several photos, just drag and drop them onto the Droplet icon. You don’t even need to have Photoshop open, it will open for you automatically.

Something you should realize about Droplets is that every time you use them, your edited images will be sent to the same place. It’s best to set up a temporary folder for the droplet to send your edited photos to and then move them to a more permanent place afterwards.

One more thing to remember is that you can have lots of Droplets! Set up a Droplet for each of your common edits and let Photoshop do all the work!

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The thing about black and white conversion is that one process doesn’t always work the best for every photo. There are several different methods because sometimes certain methods work better than others for the picture in question.

What we’ll cover here is a quick way to to create an Action that will automatically add the most popular black and white conversion techniques to your photo. We’ll combine this action with Layer Comps to give you an easy way to run through each of the conversion options to get a glimpse of what works best with your photo. I tend to lovingly refer to this technique as, Not Yo Mama’s Black and White Conversion.

1. Document Setup
The first thing to do is open your photo inside Photoshop and then go to the Actions panel (Window > Action). If you haven’t played around with actions before, you may only see the Default Actions set inside this panel. Click on the little folder icon in the bottom right corner of the panel to create a new set and give the set a name. I named mine “Bo’s Actions”.

2. Create Your Action
Click on the little paper icon to the right of the folder icon to create a new action. This will bring up a dialog box where you can name your action, designate which set you’d like to store the action in (make sure the set you created in step 1 is selected) and assign a keyboard shortcut and color to the action if you wish. These last settings are optional, so once you are ready to continue hit the Record button.

It’s worth noting that Actions are not time-based recordings; the action will only record changes you make to your document. So, no need to rush through this. Take your time and focus on getting the steps setup correctly.

3. Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer
We’ll be adding on a series of adjustment layers. First up is a Hue/Saturation layer. In the Layers panel, click the icon at the bottom of the panel to create a new adjustment layer and choose Hue/Saturation from the list.

In the settings for your Hue/Saturation layer, simply drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left (-100) to completely desaturate the image. That’s all that is needed for this adjustment layer, so return to your Layers panel and click on the eye icon next to the Hue/Saturation layer to hide it.

4. Gradient Map
Still in the Layers panel, click the create adjustment layer icon again and choose Gradient Map from the options. Simply make sure that the gradient is the black to white gradient which is the default. Now like you did before, return to the Layers panel and hide the Gradient Map layer.

5. Black & White Adjustment Layer
In the Layers panel, click the icon to add a Black & White adjustment layer. There’s no need to change any of the settings or options for this layer as it does a pretty decent job on its own. Simply return to the Layers panel and hide the Black & White adjustment layer.

6. Channel Mixer Layers
Back in the Layers panel, click to add a new Channel Mixer adjustment layer. From the main drop-down menu you’ll see an few preset options. For this first layer, select the Black & White Infrared option. Then return to your Layers panel and hide the layer.

Repeat this process for each of the Channel Mixer presets:

• Black & White with Blue Filter
• Black & White with Green Filter
• Black & White with Orange Filter
• Black & White with Red Filter
• Black & White with Yellow Filter

This may seem a little tedious right now, but keep in mind that you’re only going to have to do this once and your action will do all the heavy lifting from here on out. Simply make sure that after you create each new adjustment layer and select a preset that you return to the Layers panel and hide that layer. When you are done, your Layers panel should look like the illustration to the right.

7. Layer Comps
At this point, we’ve got all of our adjustment layers added to our document. However, it would be tedious to have to flip through each of the layers one at a time to see the effects of the adjustments; this is where Layer Comps come in.

While your action is still recording, go back to the first Hue/Saturation adjustment layer you created in the Layers panel and click on the eye icon to show that layer–your photo and the Hue/Saturation layer are the only two layers that should be visible at this poing. Bring up the Layer Comps panel (Window > Layer Comps) and click the little page icon in the bottom right corner of the panel to add a new layer comp. Type in “Hue/Saturation” as the name of the comp and hit OK.

Now go back to your Layers panel, hide the Hue/Saturation layer and then click on the eye icon for the Gradient Map layer so that your photo and the Gradient Map are the only two visible layers. Return to your Layer Comps panel and add a new comp called “Gradient Map”. Return to the Layers panel and hide the Gradient Map again, then repeat the process for the rest of the layers. By the end of the process, your Layer Comps panel should look like the illustration to the right.

8. Top It Off With Curves
Just one last adjustment layer to add for a bit of flare. In the Layers panel, click to add a new Curves adjustment layer and choose Medium Contrast from the presets drop-down. Now return to the Layers panel and hide this layer.

9. Stop and Play!
At this point, you can stop your action from recording by returning to the Actions panel (Window > Actions) and clicking on the stop icon at the bottom of the panel.

Now you can review the benefit of your hard work by pulling up the Layer Comps panel and clicking on the little box to the left of your comps to make that comp visible. You can easily scroll through each of the comps to see which black and white adjustment looks best for the particular photo you’re working on at the time.

10. Fine Tune with Curves
If one of the adjustments gets close but not quite there, there’s some fine tuning we can do. You can now make your Curves layer visible at any time. Since we added the Medium Contrast preset, it will intensify the shadows and highlights in your black and white layer. If it’s too much contrast, simply lower the opacity of the Curves layer. Still not satisfied? Pull up the Curves adjustment panel and choose another preset or manipulate the curve on your own.

Adding a vignette (darkening or lightening around the edges of the photo) is easy these days with the introduction of Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw. However, the tools in these utilities are limited in flexibility and customization.

The following is a quick and easy way to create either a dark or light vignette for your photo and give you the ability to have virtually limitless control over the effect.

1. Duplicate the Image
Open the image in Photoshop and duplicate it (Cmd/Ctrl + J) to a new layer.

2. Set the Blending Mode
If you’re wanting to darken the edges of your photo, set the duplicate layer’s blend mode to Multiply. If you’re wanting to lighten the edges, set the blend mode to Screen.

3. Make the Selection
For a vignette that is more even around the edges, grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and make your selection and leave an equal amount of padding between the selection and each edge of the photo.

For a more custom and unique shape, grab the Lasso Tool (L) and draw more of a blob shape, or do a rough outline of the subject in your image.

4. Feather it!
Now we will feather the selection by going to Select > Modifiy > Feather and setting the amount to 250 for higher-res photos or around 150 for lower-res photos..

5. Put On Your Mask
Go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide Selection (or click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel) to mask your selection. This gives you the greatest flexibility of your vignette.

6. Set Visibility
If you are using the Multiply blend mode to darken the edges, you can vary the intensity of the effect by dropping the opacity of the vignette layer.

If you are using the Screen blend mode to lighten the edges of your photo, you may find it necessary to duplicate the vignetter layer (Cmd/Ctrl + J) once or twice to change the intensity of the effect. You can then change the opacity of the duplicated layers for further control.

This technique can also be used for elements other than eyes. You can effectively change or enhance the colors of any object or photo inside Photoshop. For our purposes here, we’ll stick with stick with the eyes. Just keep in mind that you can apply these steps to any object to change its color.

1. Add Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
First, open the image that needs the color change. In the Adjustments panel, click on the icon (indicated in the image to the right) to add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. If the Adjustments panel isn’t visible, you can open it by going to the Windows menu option and choosing Adjustments.

2. Make adjustments
Toward the bottom of the Hue/Saturation panel, make sure the Colorize box is checked. Now start dragging the top Hue slider until you get the desired color. You’ll immediately notice that everything in your image is having the color applied to it. Don’t worry about that, we’ll address that in the next step.

After you’ve found the color you want, adjust the Saturation slider to give the color more or less saturation. Leave the Lightness slider at 0…like, always.

3. Apply layer mask
When you add an adjustment layer, a white layer mask icon is automatically added to it. This is how we will be limiting where the color is applied to your image.

Since the layer mask is white, it is exposing the effects of your hue/saturation adjustment layer to everything in your image We need to first switch the fill color of the layer mask to black. To do this, simply click on the layer mask thumbnail to make sure it’s selected and press Ctrl + I (Cmd + I on Mac) to invert the layer mask. This will hide the effects of the adjustment layer.

4. Paint in the color
Now grab the Brush Tool (hit B key), make sure you have a small, soft brush, set white as your foreground color, and paint in the iris of your subject’s eyes. As you paint you’ll begin to see the color adjustments you’ve made being applied to the eyes.

This is the point where you can change the color of any object in your image. Instead of painting in the eyes, simply paint over whichever object you want to change the color for.

Need to change the color of multiple objects? Simply create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer for each new color you need. You have practically an unlimited number of adjustment layers that can be added to your image.

5. Fine Tuning
At this point you can drop the opacity of your adjustment layer to reduce the intensity of the color; conversely, to made the adjustments more dramatic you can increase the Saturation in the Adjustments panel.

It’s easy to let things get out of hand with these adjustments. It all depends on the level of realism you’re wanting to achieve with your image. With any image adjustment, it helps to get the image to where you think it looks good, then walk away from your computer for a few moments. When you come back you’ll have a fresh perspective on the image and the adjustments you’ve made.

Check out the image to the right to see a comparison of the original, the slight adjustments, and the extreme adjustments.

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Once you understand what masks are and how they work, you’ll have a much easier time blending together layers, filters and effects, and you’ll be able to work with your images non-destructively.

First, let’s look at what a Layer Mask is: it’s an editable mask that is attached to your layers that controls the transparency of the layer. They contain only black and white tones, no color information. The white areas of your mask reveal your layer’s contents; the black areas conceal your layer’s contents.

Think of placing a sheet of transparency paper over a printed photo. Because the transparency paper is clear, you’re able to see your photo perfectly. Now, start painting over your transparency sheet with black paint. The areas with black paint conceal your photo.

Layer Masks work in much the same way. By default, a Layer Mask is white which is like the transparency sheet. As you add black to your Layer Mask, you will start concealing your layer’s contents.

Layer Masks take things a step further than the transparency paper, however. When you add black to the Layer Mask, you are hiding that portion of the layer and that portion becomes transparent, exposing the other layers beneath.

Allow me to illustrate this. Check out the image to the right. In my Photoshop file I have two layers: the bottom layer is an image of Leopard’s default wallpaper. The top layer is Tiger’s default wallpaper. I’ve added a Layer Mask to the Tiger wallpaper layer and created a black and white gradient across the image. Where the Layer Mask is white you see Tiger’s wallpaper; where it’s black you see Leopard’s wallpaper. Where the Layer Mask is gray you only have partial transparency; that’s how we’re able to get a smooth transition between the two layers. Keep that in mind as you continue to work with Layer Masks is that you don’t have to use only pure white and pure black.

We can view the actual Layer Mask by pressing Alt/Option and clicking directly on the Layer Mask thumbnail. As you can see we have a simple gradient, but as a Layer Mask this can give us some very cool effects.

To add a Layer Mask to your layer, simply click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette (Alt/Option + Click the icon to add a black layer mask) or you can go to the Layer menu and choose Layer Mask > Reveal All (or Hide All to add a black layer mask).

After the Layer Mask has been added, make sure its thumbnail is selected in the layers palette and use the editing tools as you normally would to manipulate your image. You can switch to your original layer whenever you’d like by clicking on its thumbnail in the layers palette. This enables you to edit the contents of your layer separately from your Layer Mask. Just click on the Layer Mask thumbnail again to switch back to it.

While you’re working on your image, you may want to see what your image looks like without the Layer Mask applied at all. To hide only the Layer Mask, simply Shift+Click on the Layer Mask thumbnail in the layer’s palette. A red X will appear over the mask and you will be able to see all the contents of your layer. Shift+Click on the Layer Mask thumbnail again to reactivate it.

One of the main benefits of using Layer Masks is that you are doing non-destructive edits. At any time you can hide or delete your Layer Mask and your original image has remained untouched.

As you can see, Layer Masks are a very powerful and integral part of Photoshop. They help make your Photoshop work faster and easier and meanwhile make it easier to return your image to its original state by working non-destructively.

Open up the image you want to use. You’ll need to be able to draw outside the borders of the image, so hit the F key to switch to full screen mode.

Use Pen Tool to Make Selection
Select the Pen tool, and make sure you’re set to draw Paths. Being by drawing around the area where you want to add the halftone pattern. Continue your selection outside the borders of the image, then complete the path by clicking on the starting poing of the path you’ve created.

With the path now complete, create a new layer. This is where you have a decision to make. If you want to end up with black dots, fill the new layer with black. If you want white dots, fill the layer with white.

Hit Cmd/Ctrl + Enter to turn the path into a selection. Now fill the selection area with the color you chose in the previous step. So, if your layer is white, fill the selected area with black. Go ahead and deselect the selection area (Cmd/Ctrl + D).

Blur Layer
Now we’re going to add blur to the layer you’ve created. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and choose a large blur radius. For my example, I chose 50px, which works pretty good for a 72ppi image.

Apply Halftone Pattern
To add the halftone pattern, go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Now, the menu that appears to you may look intimidating at first, but we’re really only going to use one setting. The first one, Max Radius, you should leave set to 8. Again, this is a pretty good setting for 72ppi images. For 300ppi images, try 25-30. Now you can set all the other settings to 0. See! That wasn’t so bad, now was it?

Invert Colors
After applying the Color Halftone filter, your layer will need to invert the colors. To do this, simply hit Cmd/Ctrl + I.

Jump Selection to New Layer
Grab the Magic Wand Tool, make sure Contiguous is unchecked in the menu bar, then click on the color you want to keep. Once your selection is made, Cmd/Ctrl + J to jump the selection to a new layer.

You can hide the original halftone layer so that the only visible layers are your original image and the new halftone layer that contains only the dots you wanted to keep.

If you have white dots, you may want to change the blending mode of your dot layer to Lighten if you have black fringes around the edges of your dots. Likewise, change the blend mode of your black dots layer to Multiply to hide the effects of white fringing.

At this point, you can continue editing your image as normal. For creative inspiration, you can add a hue/saturation adjustment layer over your image to give it a more stylistic look. To apply a color to your halftone pattern, simply right-click your halftone layer, choose Blending Options, and apply a Color Overlay. You can also apply a Gradient Overlay to vary the intensity or color of the effect. Just have fun and experiment!

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One key to creating great images is starting with a great photo and then enhancing the photo further in Photoshop. In this tutorial, I’ll explain how I setup the lighting and composition for the photo and then used Lightroom and Photoshop to end up with the final image.

Photo Setup
I found a nice indoor location with a rustic window, but you can really do an image like this in front of any window. This session took place about 2 hours before sunset. The sun was behind some clouds at the time, so we were getting some nice soft natural lighting coming in through the window. I positioned a flash about 6′ behind the model and had it firing through a white umbrella.

Because I was balancing soft ambient light with a flash, I first took an exposure reading for the ambient and then worked in the flash. 1/125 sec at f/2.8 gave me good basic exposure, so I played with the flash until I had a good balance and ended up with the flash at about 1/4 power.

The White Balance on my camera was set to daylight, which gave some nice natural tones to the ambient light. I put a CTO (color temperature orange) gel on my flash to give it a warmer tone. Had I left the gel off, the color of light would’ve been the same as the light on the front of the model.

Lightroom Adjustments
After taking several shots, it’s time to import the photos into Lightroom. On a side note, you don’t have to use Lightroom, you can easily use Adobe Bridge that ships with Photoshop. Once in Lightroom, I only made some slight adjustments to the image. The overall image was a little dark, so I increased the exposure from 0 to .40. I had to bring up the Recovery just a bit to 15 because I had an area that was clipping highlights.

To lighten up some of the darker areas, I increased the Fill Light to 16. As a general practice, anytime I increase the Fill Light I’ll bring up the Blacks a little bit. In this case, I increased Blacks to 7, then opened the image inside Photoshop.

Editing in Photoshop
1. The first thing to do inside Photoshop is duplicate the image (Cmd/Crtl + J) and use the Clone Stamp Tool, Healing Brush Tool and Patch Tool to remove blemishes and random artifacts from the model’s skin and clothing. Please see our other Photoshop Tips and Tutorials for more advice on using these tools for basic blemish removal. After all blemishes are removed, merge the layers together by clicking Cmd/Ctrl + E.

2. Duplicate the image, name the layer “Color”, then change the blending mode of the new layer to Color. With this layer still selected, go to Filter > Other > High Pass… Set the Radius to 2, hit OK, and then change the opacity of the layer to 30%.

3. Select the original image and duplicate it again. Drag the new layer to the top of the layer stack and name it “Overlay”. Change the blending mode to Overlay, then go back to Filter > Other > High Pass… Set the Radius to 2, then hit OK.

4. Hit Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + E to merge all layers. To add yet another level of contrast, duplicate the image (Cmd/Ctrl + J), change the blending mode to Hard Light and, one last time, go to Filter > Other > High Pass… This time, crank the Radius up to 80 and hit OK. Drop the layer’s opacity to 20-30% and then hit Cmd/Ctrl + E to merge the layers.

5. Duplicate the image again (Cmd/Ctrl + J…but you know that by now, right?) and go to Filter > Blur > Lens Blur. In the Iris section, change the Shape to Hexagon (6) and bump the Radius up to 50. Leave all other settings as default and click OK.

6. Make sure the lens blur layer is still selected and grab the Lasso Tool (L). Draw a loose, sloppy circle around the image. With the selection still active, go to Select > Modify > Feather… Set the Feather Radius to 200px and hit OK. Now hit your Delete key to erase the selected area of your image. Drop the layer’s opacity to 80%.

7. Select the base layer now and duplicate it one last time. Make sure the new layer is between the base layer and the lens blur layer in the Layers palette. Change the layer’s blend mode to Multiply.

Hold down your Cmd or Ctrl key and click on the thumbnail for the lens blur layer to re-select its pixel transparency. We actually need to inverse this selection, so go to Select > Inverse. Now, with the middle multiply layer still selected, hit your Delete key to delete the selected contents of this layer.

Hit Cmd/Ctrl + D to deselect the selection area and change this layer’s opacity to 20%.

You can now merge all layers and admire your finished image.

This is a sample of a workflow I’ll commonly use on images, from start to finish. Starting with a good image with good lighting and composition makes the time spent inside Photoshop more fun and more productive. While this style won’t work for every image, it’s a very appealing and worth trying on for photos with this style of lighting.

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This tutorial will walk you through an easy way to setup and compare three of the most popular skin softening techniques inside one Photoshop document while maintaining realism and skin texture. This not only gives you insight into what each softening technique has to offer, but also gives you more flexibility with your images.

Professional Portrait Retouching – Comparing Skin Softening Techniques on Vimeo,
or watch on YouTube.

1. When starting off, it’s a good idea to get the Healing Brush Tool and fix some of the small blemishes and wrinkles. Simply select the tool, Alt + click on an area to select a source point, and then click onto the areas you want to clone/heal.

2. Before we soften the skin, we’ll actually apply a medium level of sharpening to get the most realistic results. With your image selected, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask and set the Amount to 100%, Radius to 1px, and Threshold to somewhere between 4-6.

3. Duplicate your image three times (press Ctrl/Cmd + J three times). Name the layers “Gaussian Blur”, “Surface Blur”, and “Median Blur” respectively, then hide the latter two layers so that only the “Gaussian Blur” layer and your original image are visible.

4. With the “Gaussian Blur” layer selected, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur and choose a setting somwhere between 15-20px. You’re looking to blur out most of the detail in the skin, but retain a hint of some of the larger features, such as the eyes, nose, and mouth. Hit OK to apply the gaussian blur to the layer, drop the layer’s opacity to 50% and then hide the layer.

5. Select your “Surface Blur” layer, make sure it’s visible and then go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. Your settings for both sliders will need to be somewhere between 25-40. The concept here is the same as with the gaussian blur in that you want to smooth out most of the detail to make sure you have smooth transitions between shadows and highlights. Apply the surface blur to the layer, drop the layer’s opacity to 50%, then hide the layer.

6. Select the “Median Blur” layer and toggle on its visibility. Go to Filter > Noise > Median… and move the slider to somewhere between 20-25 pixels. Keep in mind the same concept as with the two previous layers in that you only want to blur out most of the detail and retain smooth skin tones and transitions. Apply the median blur and drop the layer’s opacity to 50%.

7. At this point, select your “Gaussian Blur” layer and toggle on its visibility so that only it and your original image are visible. Hold down your Alt/Option key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette to add a black layer mask. Grab the Brush Tool, set your foreground color to white, and start painting over the skin of your subject. Avoid areas of detail, such as the eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, strong creases and wrinkles, etc. You only want to paint over the open areas of skin.

In the video, I only worked on the face of the subject, but I urge you to apply this softening to any areas of skin that are visible. The reason being that the retouched areas of skin will look obviously altered against the areas of untouched skin. To keep a sense of realism to your photo, it’s recommended that you go ahead and include all of the skin in your retouches.

Be sure to check the progress of your layer mask by Alt/Option clicking on the layer mask icon to view only the mask. This will show you the areas where you may have missed some spots. Simply Alt/Option click on the layer mask icon again to return to normal view.

8. Once your layer mask is complete, you can copy it to your other layers. To do this, simply hold down the Alt/Option key, click and hold on the layer mask in your “Gaussian Blur” layer and drag it straight up to the “Surface Blur” layer. Repeat this step to add the layer mask to the “Median Blur” layer as well.

This is the point where most people stop, but we’ll be doing one more quick technique to add back in some of the detail and texture of the skin.

9. Alt/Option click on one of the layer mask icons to load the masked area as a selection. Select your original image and Ctrl/Cmd + J to jump the selected area to a new layer. Drag that layer to the top of the layer stack. Desaturate this layer by going to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

10. With this layer still selected, go to Filter > Other > High Pass… The easiest way to work with this filter is to drag the slider all the way to the left and slowly bring it to the right. Keep an eye on the highlights as they start coming back into the layer. You’ll want to end up between 10-25px, just so some of the highlights are starting to peek back through. Hit OK to apply the filter.

11. Change the blend mode of this layer to Soft Light and drop the opacity to around 25-50%, depending on how much detail you want to add back to your photo. Leave this layer at the top of the layer stack as it will be a detail overlay for the underlying softening layers.

At this point, you have three of the most popular skin softening techniques on separate layers. Now you can easily toggle the visibility of each layer to compare the different methods of skin smoothing. This is a great way to not only find a great look for your photo, but to get a little more hands-on experience with the different levels of softening and smoothing available in Photoshop.

Once you’ve found the skin softening technique that you like the most, you can raise or lower the opacity of the layer to make the effect more or less dramatic. For optimum realism, take the opacity to around 35-40%. To achieve the once-popular porcelain skin appearance, simply raise the opacity of your softening layer to 85-90% and hide the top layer that we created in steps 9-11.

Click below for a quick comparison overview of each softening technique against the original image.

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