In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to create a "smooth skin" effect in photoshop,
simply by taking a already created image:


We ended up with this:

 

Ok so lets start, start by opening up your image in photoshop.
Now you need to switch to the channel pallete and deslect all except for "RED"


Now with this channel slected press ctrl + A to select all and then ctrl + c to copy,
now select the RBG value to activate all channels.

Switch back to the layers pannel create a new layer and press ctrl + V to paste the
image that you coppied from the RED channel. You should have somthing that looks like this:


With the new layer selected you want to change the blending mode to luminosity with opacity of 100%
and 100% fill.

Now go to filter, blur and choose "gaussian blur", you can see the settings i used below or on the video above,
depending on your image the settings will most probably change, what you want is to have a reasonably high blur
but still be able to see major features of the image.



With the gaussian blur filter in use, you now need to create a layer mask on the same layer as the gaussian blur.

Now make sure you have the layer mask selected (not the layer), choose the brush option and pick a brush (not to small
but not to big), make it a softbrush 0% hardness, and set the opacity to around 25 to 35% and start brushin the areas
that you want to show in more detail (if you get stuck at this point watch the video above for help).

Once you have finished this, play with the opactity of the new layer created, i used 68% opactiy on mine.

The result: