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Retouching

Skin Smoothing

A retouching technique that reduces the appearance of pores, wrinkles, and texture irregularities in portrait skin.

Skin smoothing ranges from subtle pore reduction to heavy beauty retouching. Light smoothing evens out minor texture irregularities while maintaining a natural look. Heavy smoothing creates the porcelain-smooth appearance common in fashion and beauty advertising. The technique traditionally uses Gaussian blur applied selectively through a mask, or the more sophisticated frequency separation method. Over-smoothing destroys the natural skin texture that makes portraits look realistic, creating an artificial plastic appearance. Modern AI smoothing tools apply adaptive algorithms that smooth selectively based on skin region — more smoothing on broad cheek areas, less on eyelids and lips where texture detail matters for a natural appearance.

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