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Have you ever wonder how to create close up portraits with beautiful skin texture like the ones in magazines? In this Photoshop tutorial, we will show you the industry-secret technique the top pro photographers use to make skin textures sharp. Click to find out how you can make your photos look magazine quality.

Skin Texture Sharpening Photoshop Tutorial

Photographing Detailed Skin Texture

This technique will only work on photos with good skin texture. Most portrait shots do not show enough skin texture. Before you begin the Photoshop tutorial, read the tips below to learn how to photograph a sharp portrait with good skin texture.

• Use quality lens and camera. Many point and shoot cameras will not be able to capture fine skin details due to their small lens and sensor. For the best skin texture detail, use a digital SLR camera with sharp lens. The sharpest lenses are usually prime lenses but many high quality zoom lenses are sharp enough to record skin texture. The number of megapixels will affect the appearance of the skin texture. The camera should be at least 4 megapixels for good skin texture.
• Take a close up picture. Try to fill the frame with the head instead of doing a half or full body shot. This will ensure that you record enough pixels to show skin texture.
• Focus properly. Ensure that you focus on the eyes instead of the other body parts. You can do this easily on many digital SLR cameras by activating one focus point and pointing that focus point at the eyes. Also, change the focusing mode to AI Focus or AI Servo instead of One Shot. The AI focus modes will refocus if your camera or the model moves (ex. photographer breathing or model moving his/her head).
• Use a small aperture (higher aperture number; ex. F8). If you use an aperture that is too large (ex. F1.8), you may have enough depth of field to focus on the entire face; especially if the face is not facing straight on the camera. Also, many lens produce the sharpest results at around the F8 range but this can vary from lens to lens. Find out the optimal aperture (The aperture that will produce the sharpest results) for your lens and try to use that setting. A good website to learn more about your lens including the optimal aperture is Photozone.
• Avoid teleconverters or macro filters. These add-on lens tend to reduce image sharpness. If possible, avoid using teleconverters or macro filters. If you need to focus at a closer distance, use extension tubes or a macro lens. You can keep the UV filter on because they do not affect the sharpness of an image by any significant amount. There have been many tests done and they all conclude that UV filters do not affect sharpness noticeably.

Professional Skin Texture Sharpening Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Open an image to edit. Your image should already have a detailed skin texture like the image below. If you cannot see the skin texture, this technique won't work.

Step 2

Begin by duplicating the background layer. Press Ctrl+J or choose Layer > Duplicate Layer. If you are using Photoshop CS3, right mouse click on the new layer and choose Convert to Smart Object. By converting the layer to a smart object, we can apply smart filters which are basically non-destructive filters; you can edit or remove the filter at any time and it keeps the file size small.

Step 3

Duplicate the layer again and rename the top layer to High Pass and middle layer to Surface Blur.

Step 4

Select the Surface Blur layer and choose Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. This filter blurs the image but unlike the Gaussian Blur filter, Surface Blur protects the edges. In the Surface Blur tool, adjust the settings so that the skin texture is blurred but without losing the edge. The best place to look at while doing this is the eye.

Here is a 100% crop of the image after applying the surface blur with the High Pass layer hidden. Notice that fine details such as hair is still quite visible and sharp.

Step 5

Select the High Pass layer and choose Filter > Other > High Pass. The High Pass filter is exactly the opposite of the gaussian blur filter. Instead of blurring the details, it creates an image of the edge details. In the High Pass filter, set the Radius to 3 pixels then click OK. You should now have a gray image with an embossed effect of the outlines in the image.

Step 6

Change the blending mode of the High Pass layer to Linear Light. This will make the layer blend into the Surface Blur layer.

You should now get a very sharp image with plenty of skin texture. It looks overly sharpened but in the next steps, we'll reduce the effect to make the skin look more natural.

Step 7

Before we start reducing the opacity of the High Pass layer, we'll work on the layer mask for the Surface Blur layer so that it only affects the highlights of the image. What this does is smooth the skin on the highlights but and keeps the shadows sharper.

If you are using Photoshop CS3, select the layer mask in the Surface Blur Smart Filters. If you are using Photoshop CS2 or older, select the Surface Blur layer and choose Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All.

Photoshop CS3

Photoshop CS2 or older

Step 8

After you have the layer mask selected, choose Image > Apply Image. Use the settings from the image below then click OK.

Step 9

Finally, reduce the opacity of the High Pass layer to 50%.

Final Results

100% crop before retouching

100% crop after retouching