Get the Goods: Photoshop Portrait Makeover Tutorial -- Removing Pimples and Reducing Wrinkles

Yesterday, Digital Photography School forum member Yanik (image-y) introduced us to Part 1 of his Photoshop Portrait Makeover tutorial dealing with whitening teeth and eyes.

Part II teaches us how to remove pimples and diminish wrinkles. Yanik explains why he chooses to "lessen" rather than "remove" wrinkles because he wants to make sure his subject's remain realistic and not overprocessed.

Here is a summary of the basic steps in the tutorial:

1) Duplicate Layer -- to avoid making adjustments to the original image
2) Use spot or regular healing, remembering to use a small brush to remove blemishes
3) Flatten image and then duplicate layer again. This was a new step for me. Usually I just keep adding duplicate layers, but I think flattening one step will save me a lot of effort later when I need to change opacity or use some other type of blending mode to adjust a specific layer without affecting the entire image
4) Lower the opacity of the layer to 50 percent to bring back some of the wrinkles.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's post about using Photoshop to add makeup to a subject's face, including eyeshadow and lipstick, as this is a technique I've never tried before.