Getting that smooth baby skin effect

Stinky · 19 Feb 2015 at 10:54

So babies are blotchy! No 2 ways about it..... so when shooting babies do you guys just touch it up in PS in post? Or clarity in LR maybe?

I see people online selling actions for Beautiful Baby Skin effects. Surely this can be got with just some basic touch ups? or is it really time consuming?

Im trying to teach myself photoshop and don't want to end up teaching my self a real long winded way if theres actually something basic I'm missing.

Sh4rkie · 19 Feb 2015 at 12:35

Frequency separation is the technique, loads of YT videos on it and you can download the action free from lots of places (takes 2 mins to create your own though). You'll need separate actions for 8 and 16bit images due to the parameters between the two being different.

Phate · 19 Feb 2015 at 12:50

YT Some skin smoothing techniques, there are loads about.

Bluecube · 19 Feb 2015 at 18:55

Email Beyoncé and/ or L'oreal. They're experts on skin smoothing techniques.

a1ex2001 · 20 Feb 2015 at 22:49

It's something I've never understood, babies skin is generally blotchy everyone knows this so why edit it out? Just makes the pictures look fake to me!

D.P. · 20 Feb 2015 at 22:56

a1ex2001 said:
It's something I've never understood, babies skin is generally blotchy everyone knows this so why edit it out? Just makes the pictures look fake to me!

Agreed, leave it as it is IMO.
I don't want any plastic doll looking baby photo.

At The Gates · 21 Feb 2015 at 17:38

I've taken a lot of baby pictures with my two over the past 4.5 years and i've never needed to, or even wanted to smooth out their skin.

T0pPredator · 21 Feb 2015 at 18:29

Surprised you need to work on the skin of a baby! Sh4rkie is right, frequency separation is the perfect technique to correct this kind of thing. Search it on Youtube, guy called Phlearn on there has a good tutorial which is where I picked it up.

I think with it being a baby you should use the technique with subtlety though!

Sh4rkie · 21 Feb 2015 at 18:56

T0pPredator said:
I think with it being a baby you should use the technique with subtlety though!

This in spades ^^

Very young white babies tend to have red blotchy skin so FS and other subtle smoothing / softening can help.

@OP as with anything discuss retouching (vs processing) with the client first. Even if it's the most tasteful retouching possible you could still nark off the parents if they weren't expecting it.