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What if I told you that this image is the “after” of a skin retouching work? (Let’s leave blemishes for another article)

Get Perfect Skin for Photoshop in seconds using PROs technique in a Photoshop Action
One of the most difficult effects for amateur retouchers is certainly keeping the pores in dramatic skin retouching works, and the skills on Photoshop needed to figure it out say how pro you are. Well, Today you’ll become a PRO, once you master the process, because I’m bringing you a free tool to do it in seconds, as an Action, ready to download and run.

I know… you may say “hey, that face looks like plastic”… well, that’s not because of the lack of pores, but rather because:

  1. The original image (below) already had an unsharp mask filter applied (not officially said, but I can tell)
  2. There are other retouches in the original photo, made by the author, like depth of field (real or faked) that help to the “plastic” effect at this small size.
  3. I just applied the Photoshop Action plus a quick masking. Nothing else
  4. This is not the intended size, which is 1024px wide, so click it and enjoy the pores at full resolution.

While trying to reproduce mechanical color separations on Photoshop to apply it to spot colors, years ago, I realized that PS can do almost every calculation you can brain, like “give me the difference between these two layers, add the result to this other, and substract it from the background…”

It took me a while to narrow the workflow down to a bullet-proof sequence, so at the end it was cleaner for me to work with actions, until I got something I can remember, but most importantly share.

From that process, here’s the saved actions for you to easily get an image as the one above, from an original like the one below processed in a few seconds. (not even mentioning that the original shows evidence of forced sharpening).

Here’s the original image by H.J. Wesselink.

Texture extractor skin retouching sample image - Before

Download Texture Extractor Action

SergioZambrano_Actions.atn

Downloads Box by SocialBlogsiteWebDesign.com

How to use it

  1. Expand the actions file and load it from the actions panel.
  2. Start from an RGB flat file.
  3. Run the Action and follow the instructions.

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About the author:Sergio Zambrano

Print designer until it started to die, Web Designer by hobby and Coder by force. Living in Miami and getting less sun than russians in winter, but I like Wordpress develpment even more.

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  • Erin

    I’d love to try your action script—it looks pretty brilliant— but your downloads register box thing doesn’t appear to be functional. It’s a decent enough idea, but I’ve yet to receive a password after registering and I have work to do and I’d rather not wait around. Freebies are awesome for attracting visitors, but if your site makes the user jump through hoops and then fails to deliver, they probably won’t bother coming back and all your hard work is kind of null and void…

  • http://socialblogsitewebdesign.com Sergio Zambrano

    I completely agree with you.
    My apologies for that. I’ve updated my core files and I must have forgotten to re-hack some core wp files that logs you in right away no waiting for a pass.
    I’ll jump on that right away and email you the script.
    UPDATE: It works just fine.
    I implemented it in another site with an auto-login feature, but it needed the core to be re-hacked for every wp update, so I didn’t do it in my site. I prefer visitors to register :)
    I’ll include a checkbox to make it optional in a future release.

  • http://socialblogsitewebdesign.com Sergio Zambrano

    Erin:
    Your email is not in the user’s list, so it seems you didn’t register, which means all you just said is a guess.
    The download thing IS intended to ask for your registration, and the thing works fine not failing to deliver.
    If you registered and yet couldn’t download it, let me know.

  • Steve

    Hi there,

    Unfortunately I too tried to register and haven’t received a password, which is a shame as I look forward to checking out your Action.
    Surely the registration process is flawed?

  • Kyle

    I had the same problem. I’m not sure if it’s a mailto error, but I registered with two different emails and neither received the pw. I’d love to test the action out.

  • http://socialblogsitewebdesign.com Sergio Zambrano

    My apologies. It must be some limit in the DB with thousands of subscribers.
    I can’t figure out where the problem is, but none of my sites (under same hosting) are sending registration emails.
    I’ll email you your credentials manually.

  • http://socialblogsitewebdesign.com Sergio Zambrano

    Yes, the registration is flawed. Only think I can think of is Godaddy pushing for me to upgrade every few months to a more expensive hosting. No email goes out from 2 different installations of WP in my same hosting. It must be the hosting, since they even use different DBs, domains, themes, plugins…

  • nmathisen

    I’ve received the message and can log in, but when trying to download I’m receiving a “nothing found” message.

  • http://socialblogsitewebdesign.com Sergio Zambrano

    Thanks for the news!
    There was a new plugin I was testing that messed double extension files.

    You can download it now.

  • theblackpanther

    just want to say thanks, I will try it.