# LR3 Gaussian blur and skin smoothing



## pragmatist (Dec 21, 2010)

Hi, new here. 
Can anybody give me a rundown on how to smooth the skin for portrait work, I have gone into brushes, Custom and smooth skin but the effect seems very subdued.
Also is there a tip or trick to get the gaussian blur look?
Thanks,
Matty


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 21, 2010)

pragmatist, welcome.

You can layer multiple applications of the smooth skin (or any) brush. Just click New in the local adjustment panel, and paint over the same area again. The smooth skin brush consists of Clarity -100 and Sharpening +25, you can fiddle with those as well in Custom.


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## pragmatist (Dec 21, 2010)

Brad Snyder said:


> pragmatist, welcome.
> 
> You can layer multiple applications of the smooth skin (or any) brush. Just click New in the local adjustment panel, and paint over the same area again. The smooth skin brush consists of Clarity -100 and Sharpening +25, you can fiddle with those as well in Custom.



Cheers Brad


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## matsmithphotog (Dec 21, 2010)

Hello

I know this may not appear to directly help with your question, but it is possibly worth saying for the record.

Whilst skin smoothing in Lightroom is possible, it's the most basic process and many don't recommend it for more serious work.

Personally I would never do skin smoothing within Lightroom, because the brush operates on the flat image, and this causes a loss of texture, which looks unnatural.

If ever I smooth skin now, I always switch to Photoshop (not sure if that's an option for you), split the image into frequency layers, and select and work with the low frequency layer. Whilst there is quite a learning curve, I'd argue it's well worth it.

The level of tech detail on the following thread may scare the heck out of you - but worth getting your head around if you are interested in advanced techniques:

http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=439098&page=1

This may not apply to you if you just want a quick-and-dirty solution.

HTH,

Mat


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## pragmatist (Dec 21, 2010)

Hi Mat,
Thanks for taking the time out to reply however i do not use photoshop and cannot justify spending £600 on a product where for the most part i would use about 2% of what it can do. Do you know of any decent LR plug ins. I have mastered the skin smoothng now but it's the Gaussian blur which is annoyingly absent from LR3 which is irritating me, I love the Gaussian effect on portraits and Aperture 3 does it quite well but i have had to leave this due to it's buggy nature and constant crashing.


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## Graeme Brown (Dec 21, 2010)

I'm a big fan of Portrait Professional for skin, eyes, teeth etc. It's not a plugin as such but you can define it as an external editor. I may be wrong but I don't think it requires Ps to be installed.


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## MoreThanWords (Dec 21, 2010)

I find Imagenomic's Portraiture to be quite good. The nice thing is that it automatically selects the skintones so you don't have to brush. It does so very good. At 200 USD it's still not a bargain but you can play with a test version to see if you like it.
There's also one of the filters in Nik's Color Efex Pro plugin that does skin softening.



pragmatist said:


> Hi Mat,
> Do you know of any decent LR plug ins.


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## pragmatist (Dec 23, 2010)

MoreThanWords said:


> I find Imagenomic's Portraiture to be quite good. The nice thing is that it automatically selects the skintones so you don't have to brush. It does so very good. At 200 USD it's still not a bargain but you can play with a test version to see if you like it.
> There's also one of the filters in Nik's Color Efex Pro plugin that does skin softening.



That's the 3rd time someone has recommended this app


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