Retouching skin with Photoshop

Removing or softening skin flaws with the clone tool

1. Select the clone tool with a small brush, lighten mode, ~12% opacity and 100% flow rate.
2. Alt click on a part of skin with the appropriate color.
3. Soften the blemish with click and hold.
4. Change mode to darken the light area.

Removing highlights and reflections (like nose edge) uses the same method with the darken mode. Applying a Gaussian blur afterwards will remove imperfections.

Softening and blending skin with a Gaussian blur

1. Copy the image to two new layers.Hide the top layer and select the middle layer.
2. Change blend mode from normal to darken in the Layer's pallete.
3. From the menu choose filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur with a 35 pixels blur.
4. Hide middle layer and chose top layer.
5. Change blend mode from darken to lighten, and apply a 50 pixels blur.
6. Click on the middle layer and change its opacity to 30%.
7. Hide background layer and create a new layer, dragging it to the top of the stack.
8. Hold ALT key, click hold on Layers, releasing the click over 'Merge visible', creating a flatten version in the new layer.
9. Make background layer visible and hide the two middle layers.
10. Select the top l ayer and lower its opacity to 37%, adjusting this value to your taste.
11. To remove the Gaussian blur from the non skin areas (eyes, mouth, etc), click on the layer mask icon on the layer palette.
12. With the foreground color black, select a small soft edged brush and paint over everything except the skin.
13. Do Layers->Flatten image, and maybe retouch the Brightness/Contrast.
14. Finally, use the spot sharpener over eyes, mouth and everything else you want sharpened, but don't over sharpen as its very artificial.

These are quick notes from the useful tutorial