How to Smooth Skin in Lightroom Mobile & Classic: Step-by-Step Guide
Do you want to fully satisfy your clients by offering them edited photographs without wrinkles and blemishes on the skin? Don’t worry! In this article we’ll discuss how to smooth skin in Lightroom to achieve a flawless and smooth skin of subjects within photographs. Blurring skin in Lightroom for smoothening is not the ultimate solution, as it can compromise the overall image quality. In this tutorial, we’ll explore advanced techniques in Lightroom that allow for precise skin smoothening while preserving fine details and textures.
By the end of this guide, you’ll master the art of selectively smoothing specific areas of the skin without affecting the rest of the image, ensuring a polished but natural look. This article will be more beneficial for professional Lightroom users who are concerned about the fashion industry or are working in the advertising companies of cosmetics or beauty products. They need to show smooth skin to ensure the quality of beauty creams, so they can do so by using the advanced settings of Lightroom for skin smoothening. Let’s explain it:
How to Smooth Skin in Lightroom Classic?
Retouching and smoothing the skin is super duper easy in Lightroom, and after reading this step-by-step tutorial, you’ll find it like a child’s play. But before going to discuss this in detail, it’s worth mentioning that these settings are only available in Lightroom Classic, so make sure that you’re using the Classic version before following these steps:
Step 1: Import the Image into the Lightroom Catalog
First, you need to import your photograph into the Lightroom editing panel and you’ll do so by going to the Library module or by directly importing from your desktop or laptop. After doing it click on the Develop Module and then start retouching skin by following the given below steps.
Step 2: Image Masking
This step is similar to what we’ve done in the first step for blurring the background in Lightroom. Navigate to the Develop module and then head to the top right corner of the panel available on the right side of the screen and click on the icon for masking. Next, a new panel will open, and at right down the bottom, you’ll detect the Subject option, so tab on it.
After that, you’ll see a nice clean mask on your selected photograph, and a new panel will open with a wide range of options. Here, you can choose the part of the subject that you want to soften. In most cases, we choose face skin, so click on it, make sure that it’s ticked and then hit Create Mask.
Step 3: Subtract Objects From Mask
In order to give our photograph a natural look, we need to subtract eyes, eyebrows, and lips from the mask, so after the masking, a new panel will open where you’ve to click on Mask 1, and two buttons will be activated, including Add and Subtract. Press the Subtract option and then select Brush from the new pop-up panel. You’ll get an icon on your cursor that will give you full control for making selection of objects within the photograph.
Make sure to do brush settings on the right-hand side where everything should be 100 except size that you can adjust according to your desire. Select eyes, eyebrows, nose corners, or any other object that you want to subtract from the smoothing effect of Lightroom.
Step 4: Adjust Texture, Clarity, & Sharpness
After deselecting objects, go to the bottom of the right panel and find Texture, Clarity, and Sharpening sliders and make adjustments to them; drag sliders and also see the preview of the photo where you find that skin is looking smooth and enhanced stop sliders there.
Step 5: Remove Remaining Blemishes
Using masking tools, the skin achieves a soft, smooth texture; however, a few imperfections may persist, requiring meticulous manual removal. For this purpose, you’ll head to the Healing tool located above in the center. After pressing the Healing tool, three more options will appear, including Content Aware Removal, Healing, and Clone Stamp. After hitting content-aware removal, two sliders will appear, one for size and the other for Opacity.
Here, you can adjust the size of the healing brush according to the size of the blemishes and adjust the Opacity to 100. The Content-Aware tool will help you remove the remaining blemishes by moving pixels from nearby areas to the blemishes. Next, you’ve to press the command key and draw a box of blemishes so the content-aware tool will automatically smooth the skin included in the box. All is done, and now your skin in the photograph will become smooth, enhanced, and soft with a gorgeous look.
How to Smooth Skin in Lightroom Mobile / CC?
If you don’t have experience with Lightroom Classic, then you can smooth skin in the Lightroom mobile app to give your photographs a glorious and engaging look. Looking for an easy tutorial on how to smooth skin on Lightroom mobile? You’re at the right place because after following the steps given below, you can effortlessly use Lightroom for skin smoothening purposes. Let’s explain:
Step 1: Import / Select Image
Open the Lightroom app and click on the plus icon to import a new photograph, or click on the photograph icon to select an image from the Lightroom library on which you want to remove blemishes or other imperfections.
Step 2: Use Selective Editing Brush
After image selection you need to click on the Selecting Editing Brush available at the left side in the bottom toolbar. It’ll allow you to manually select the specific part of the picture on which you want to apply filters and effects so you can effortlessly do selective editing via this selective Brush. Next, a new window will appear where you need to hit the + icon, choose Brush and then adjust the size, flow, and feather for Brush.
Step 3: Masking on Skin
When you’ve selected the Brush then brush over the skin and select only the area that you want to smooth over. If you want your image not to lose its original beauty and maintain its natural look, then don’t select lips, eyes, eyebrows, and nose corners. Select only skin or areas containing blemishes.
Step 4: Navigate to the Details Option
After masking over the specific area of your photograph, scroll the bottom toolbar to the right until you find the Details icon and tab on it. A pop-up window will open, displaying sliders for adjusting Noise and Sharpness. Raise the noise levels to above 50 and lower the sharpness to -50 or less. After doing adjustments click on the tick icon for saving.
Step 5: Apply Effects
The next tab on the Effects icon is located on the right side of Details, and a new panel will open with the adjustment sliders for Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze. Make adjustments to these effects while keeping an eye on the preview of the image. Where you will find that skin is looking smooth and soft, you can stop sliders there.
Conclusion
After a detailed discussion on how to smooth out skin in Lightroom CC and Classic, we can say that you don’t need to consult any professional photographer for skin smoothening in your photographs, as you can do it yourself by following the steps provided in this guide.
For your casual photographs, you can use Lightroom Mod APK, while for wedding or other events photos, you must use Lightroom Classic as it gives quality results due to its powerful editing tools. If you’ve any questions about using the Lightroom mobile app or Lightroom CC, feel free to reach out through the comment section. Our team of experienced Lightroom specialists is here to deliver quick and professional support.
