How to Airbrush Using Photoshop

Create flawless skin on regular people with airbrushing effects

In a world where perfect faces, flawless features and glowing skin tones rule advertisements, posters and commercials, many photographers turn to Adobe Photoshop to achieve beautiful pictures free of blemishes and imperfections. One of the most popular techniques for this purpose is called airbrushing. There are many different airbrushing tools in Photoshop that perform certain functions and produce a certain type of result, but none are actually called an "airbrush." Thus, to learn how to airbrush in Photoshop, you must know exactly what you desire the finished photo to look like and which tool you can use to accomplish it.

Instructions

1. Open the photograph you wish to airbrush in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Elements. The image should preferably be in .psd format. The .jpg format will work, but you might notice less flexibility with some of your options.

2. Create a duplicate layer by selecting Control + J. Tutorialpulse.com suggests creating an entirely new group for the layer; you can do this by pressing Control + G and putting the duplicate layer in this group. Name it something distinctive, such as "airbrush layer."

   Creating a duplicate layer is necessary because you don't want to apply edits to the original layer itself. You have a bigger range of flexibility when working with a duplicate layer that is laid right on top of the original layer. This helps to keep everything smooth and not make airbrushed areas obvious to an untrained eye.

3. Remove any acne, moles, scars or other unwanted imperfections using the Spot Healing Brush, which looks much like a band-aid. You can adjust the size of the brush in the menu if it's too big or too small. The brush will take pixel information from unflawed skin on either side of the blemish to recreate skin to replace the blemished area.

4. Duplicate the layer again and name it "Blur." You can airbrush wrinkles, crow's feet, large pores and uneven skin tones manually using the blur tool found in the toolbar on the left.

5. Give the photo subject flawless skin with the surface blur filter. This method can be used if the manual blur tool was not enough, or if you want smoother skin all over. Select the "Surface Blur Filter" from the filter commands menu in the toolbar. This opens a new dialog box. Use the radius and threshold sliders in the box to preview how much of the filter should be used. Applying too much of a radius will result in plastic skin, so keep the radius at a low level, beneath 50.

6. Make another duplicate layer, which will be used to texturize and change the color of the skin tone. Since the blur tools can make skin look unnatural, texturize the skin just a little by applying the "Add Noise" filter from the filter menu. Again, you can adjust how much texture the skin takes on and preview the results in the preview window before committing them to the photo.

7. Press Control + U to call up the Hue/Saturation filter. Use the sliders to modify the appearance of the photo and make the complexion brighter and richer. This can also give the appearance that the subject has a suntan.

8. Save your work by selecting the File-Save As command from the menu.

References

• Tutorial Pulse: Superb Skin Technique
• Photoshop Tutorial: Airbrushing Natural Smooth Skin