THE BASIC IDEA
The theory sound simple enough: blur the big stuff and leave the small stuff alone. We want to lose the blotches but keep the pores and other fine details that make skin texture believable, and, the lack of which, conjours up the dreaded judgment "AIRBRUSHED!!!"

But if it sounds simple, it also sounds impossible, until we actually explore the relationship between blurring and sharpening in Photoshop, specifically between the Gaussian Blur filter and the High-Pass filter.

Rather than get into an elaborate discussion that is ultimately beside the point, try this yourself with any image you wish. Or you can just watch me as I play around.

NOTE: If you chose to pull the example images posted here, your numbers will be different than mine. I worked with an original Hi-res image; these are scaled down for the purposes of illustrating the steps.)

THE BASIC IDEA
The theory sound simple enough: blur the big stuff and leave the small stuff alone. We want to lose the blotches but keep the pores and other fine details that make skin texture believable, and, the lack of which, conjours up the dreaded judgment "AIRBRUSHED!!!"

But if it sounds simple, it also sounds impossible, until we actually explore the relationship between blurring and sharpening in Photoshop, specifically between the Gaussian Blur filter and the High-Pass filter.

Rather than get into an elaborate discussion that is ultimately beside the point, try this yourself with any image you wish. Or you can just watch me as I play around.

NOTE: If you chose to pull the example images posted here, your numbers will be different than mine. I worked with an original Hi-res image; these are scaled down for the purposes of illustrating the steps.)