How to Use the Skin Smoothing Neural Filter in Photoshop? – Beginners Tutorial
Want flawless skin in your photos without spending hours editing? In this beginner-friendly tutorial, I’ll show you how to use Photoshop’s Skin Smoothing Neural Filter to quickly and easily achieve natural-looking results. Whether you’re a photographer or just looking to enhance your portraits, this tool is a game-changer for retouching. No advanced skills required—just follow along, and you’ll be perfecting your images in no time. Let’s dive into the magic of AI-powered editing!
This video is from our AI Portrait Retouching Course.
Video Summary
In this segment, the instructor evaluates Adobe Photoshop for AI-powered portrait retouching. While Photoshop is the industry leader for general editing, the instructor argues it currently sits in the “second tier” for rapid, AI-based portrait work. He highlights the lack of a “one-click” blemish removal tool and demonstrates the strengths and limitations of the built-in Neural Filters.
Time Stamps
- 0:00 – Tier Classification: Explaining why Photoshop is not currently recommended for high-speed AI retouching compared to dedicated tools like Evoto or Retouch4me.
- 1:16 – The Blemish Problem: Identifying the major missing feature: an automated way to remove spots and blemishes in one click.
- 1:55 – The “Old Fashioned” Way: Demonstrating the manual Spot Healing Brush, which is effective but too slow for high-volume workflows.
- 2:44 – Neural Filters Overview: Accessing Photoshop’s dedicated AI workspace via
Filter > Neural Filters. - 3:48 – Skin Smoothing: testing the “Skin Smoothing” AI.
- 4:28 – The Blur vs. Smooth Paradox: Explaining why the Blur slider should be kept low to preserve skin texture, while the Smoothness slider is used to even out tones.
- 5:26 – Smart Portrait: A look at “non-retouching” AI features like changing facial age, expressions, and hair thickness.
- 6:20 – Light Direction: Using AI to realistically shift the lighting source on the subject’s face.
- 7:10 – Makeup Transfer: Briefly discussing the ability to copy makeup styles from a reference image (and why it often fails to look natural).
- 8:38 – Adobe Exchange: Introduction to the next topic—finding specialized third-party add-ons to bridge Photoshop’s AI gaps.
