Removing Grain from Skin Tones

>> I've got a lot of grain in scanned photos -- or heavily mottled skin -- I need to smooth. Also, my scanner has a way of over-sharpening Any tip's or web site would be helpful...<<
Submitted by: William using Photoshop 7 with Mac OS X

Ah... the famous "Flesh Tones" tutorial again...

PS 911 Team says:
Here's the best tip to remove any kind of grain from skin and give it a nice smoothness.

Duplicate the background layer.

Apply a Gaussian blur to the whole upper layer. (Experiment, but 5 pixels for a 30 - 40 MB file. The larger the file, the more blur. )

Now, change the blending mode to Darken and adjust the opacity (Start around 30)

Next, make a layer mask and begin painting back as much detail as you desire. Pay particular attention to eyes, mouth and teeth.

Our database is showing a good tutorial on working with flesh tones at:
polykarbon.com.

The reason we cite that tutorial is it includes a swatch pallette created from Prepress Target values for Skin which is generally accepted as the correct target values for litho printing.

See: Flesh Tones Palette which should open in a new browser window.

From Photoshop 911 Case #04029; Surry, CA

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