Start by pressing Ctrl-J to duplicate the Background layer, as shown here. (See? I told you these steps were going to be simple.)

©ISTOCKPHOTO/JUAN MONINO

Go under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur. For a low-resolution photo, like this one, try a 6-pixel blur, then click OK. For high-resolution photos (from a 6- to 10-megapixel camera), apply a 20-pixel blur, or for 12-megapixels or higher, try 25 pixels. This blurs the living daylights out of the photo (as seen here). Sure, it’s blurry, but boy is her skin soft! (Okay, that was lame. Continue.)

Press-and-hold the Ctrl key and click once on the Create a New Layer icon at the top of the Layers palette. This creates a new blank layer (Layer 2) directly beneath your current layer (the blurry Layer 1). Now, in the Layers palette, click back on the top layer (the blurry Layer 1), then press Ctrl-G to group the blurry layer with the blank layer beneath it (Layer 2). Doing this removes all the blurriness from view (and that’s exactly what we want to do at this point). The idea is to reveal the blurry layer just where you want it (on her skin), while avoiding all the detail areas (like her eyes, hair, clothing, eyebrows, nostrils, lips, jewelry, etc.). That’s what we’ll do next.

In the Layers palette, click on the middle layer (the blank Layer 2), as you’re going to paint on this layer. Press the letter D to set your Foreground color to black. Get the Zoom tool (Z) and zoom in on her face. Then get the Brush tool (B), choose a medium-sized, soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker up in the Options Bar, and begin painting over her skin (as shown here). You’re not actually painting over the photo—you’re painting in black on the blank layer, and as you paint, it reveals that part of the blurry layer that is on top of it. Remember the rule: don’t paint over detail areas—avoid the eyes, hair, etc., as I mentioned earlier. In the example shown here, I have only painted over (softened) the left side of her face, so you can see the effect of the skin softening.

Continue painting on both sides of her face until you’ve carefully covered all the non-detail areas of her face. You’ll have to vary the size of the brush to get under her nose, and carefully between the eyes and the eyebrows.

Six: Continue to paint over all the other areas that need softening, and I know I sound like a broken record but avoid those detail areas, like her hair, and her eyebrows, and her lips, etc. Now, you can see that at this point we do have the porcelain-skin look. If you like this look, but you think it’s just a little too soft, then simply go to the Layers palette and lower the Opacity of Layer 2 (the one you just painted on) to 50% and see how that looks. That will lighten the softening pretty significantly, and it might be just the amount you’re looking for. If 50% is still too much, try 40%, or even 30%. So, you could be done right here. But, if you want something even better, continue on.

Let’s first make sure you haven’t missed any areas, so press-and-hold the Alt key, and in the Layers palette click directly on the little Eye icon next to the layer thumbnail of Layer 2 (as shown here). This displays just the black brush stroke layer itself, and you’ll see instantly whether you missed any areas or not. If you can’t see it very well (remember we just dropped the opacity of this layer), then you may need to increase the opacity for a minute. In this case, you can see I missed areas on both her cheeks, as well as some on her chin and forehead.

These missed areas are really easy to fix—just take your Brush tool and paint right over them. Now, to get back to your regular view, Alt-click on the Eye icon again and things will be back to normal, so you’ll see all of the layers again. Don’t forget to reduce the opacity of the layer with the black brush strokes on it to whatever you had it set at in Step Six.

Now that you can see your full-color image again, you’re going to load your black brush strokes as a selection (it’s easier than it sounds). Just press-and-hold the Ctrl key and click once directly on the layer thumbnail. This loads it as a selection, as seen here.

Now, click on the Background layer (your selection will still be in place), then press Ctrl-J to take those selected areas of your Background layer and put them up on their own separate layer (as shown here in the Layers palette). Go ahead and hide the top two grouped layers (the blurry layer and black brushed layer below it) and the Background layer from view (click on the little Eye icons to the left of each of those layers), and you’ll see the awful-looking thing you see here.

You’ll need to remove the color from this layer, so go under the Enhance menu, under Adjust Color, and choose Remove Color. This removes the color from just your current layer (as shown here). I know, it looks pretty creepy. Retouching isn’t pretty. Well, at least not until you’re done.

Now, to bring the texture, highlights, and shadows back into the skin, go under the Filter menu, under Other, and choose High Pass to bring up the High Pass filter dialog (seen here). Drag the Radius slider all the way to the left (as shown) to make the image pretty flat-looking. Don’t click OK quite yet.

Now drag the Radius slider to the right until some of the texture, highlights, and shadows start to return to the image (as shown here). I can’t give you an exact number to dial in every time, so just drag it until your image looks somewhat like the one you see here, then click OK.

Next, make the other layers visible again (by clicking where the Eye icons used to be in the first column of the Layers palette), then drag your gray texture layer to the top of the layer stack (as shown here). Okay, it’s still not looking that great yet. Be patient, we’re almost there.

Now to bring her original skin texture and highlights back into our photo, you’re going to change the layer blend mode of this top layer (the gray texture layer) from Normal to Soft Light, in the pop-up menu at the top left of the Layers palette (as shown here). When you first do this, it brings back the skin texture with a vengeance, which is not our goal. Okay, it’s not as much as the original texture, because there is some softening on the layers below it, but it’s too intense at this point.

So (and here’s where the cool part is), you’re going to dial in the exact amount of original skin texture you’d like visible by lowering the Opacity setting of this texture layer. The lower you make the opacity, the less skin texture is visible. For this particular photo, lowering the Opacity to 50% looks like it gives about the right balance between softening and texture. Compare the before and after photos below.

Before

After