We all have wrinkles, blemishes and laugh lines. When these features are completely removed—with the exception of blemishes—the image instantly looks fake. The key is to make the retouch look natural by softening wrinkles, fading laugh lines and smoothing the skin. But sometimes you may want flawless, almost porcelain skin that screams SUPERMODEL. You could spend hours following along with tutorials on how to dodge, burn and soften skin or you can easily get amazing results with Athentech’s new Perfect Skin plug-in for Lightroom and Photoshop.

Natural versus Supermodel skin retouching

Before we begin, we need to know what images are better for a natural or supermodel look. A simple rule could be what type of makeup or outfit would a woman wear if she went on a common errand such as shopping as opposed to a special Hollywood party. Shopping, she would probably wear casual clothes and natural makeup. On the other hand, she may get all decked out for a Hollywood party, which is something not everyone is able to do. Bottom line: save the supermodel look for images that invoke a sense of fantasy or a special moment that was worth hours of applying real makeup.

One click Supermodel Look in Lightroom

Working inside Lightroom, right click on an image, select Edit In and choose Perfect Skin. When the Edit Photo with PCPlugin.exe dialog box appears, applying these settings will return a high-quality, 16 bit TIFF image with a ProPhoto RGB color space. If you don’t plan on printing at the highest quality, or file size is a concern, choose 8-bit JPG and Adobe 1998 as the color space. Click Edit to launch Perfect Skin

Perfect Skin comes 16 built-in presets, ranging from gentle skin to high fashion, face shaping, flawless skin enhancements. Clicking the Adjust tab allows you to make changes to the preset. You can even save these changes as a custom preset by clicking the Create tab. Click Save to apply the changes and return to Lightroom with a new TIFF image.

Understanding each slider

Hovering your mouse over a slider in the Adjust panel will produce tooltips. It’s best to start with a built-in preset, then tweak the settings to your personal needs. Don’t forget to save the new settings as your own custom preset.

30-Day fully functional trial

The trial period lasts for 30 days after your first use of Perfect Skin. It is a FULLY functional trial with zero limitations and no watermarks. Try it out on your images!