I’ve been working on portrait editing for a while now, and one of the biggest challenges I face is smoothing out skin imperfections without making the subject look like a plastic doll. I often end up overdoing the frequency separation or using the smoothing brushes too much, which flattens out all the natural skin texture.

Does anyone have tips or preferred techniques for balancing skin retouching? I’ve heard that working with high and low frequency layers in frequency separation can help, but I’m not entirely sure about the best settings or when to use additional tools like the clone stamp or healing brush in combination. Also, any advice on working non-destructively would be great since I want to preserve the original details as much as possible.

Would love to hear your workflow or any subtle Photoshop tricks that keep skin looking polished yet realistic!