I'd like to let everyone know before they start this tutorial that I am heavily against image editing of this kind. However, I will teach this anyway because I do know how to do it and the point of this section is to help people learn how to use Photoshop.

Your first step is to take a picture whose subject you want to smooth. Here is the picture I will be using, thanks to Google image search:

The first thing I will be doing is creating two copies of the background and putting them in a group, like so. The circle shows you what button to press to create a group.

Then, you will select the bottom layer of Group 1. For me, this is the Layer called "Layer 1 copy." With this layer, you will go to Filter->Blur->Surface Blur. I put it on Radius of 10px and Threshold of 15 levels, but you should do what you think looks best. You want it to be blurred but not so much you can't recognize it, and not so little as to not making a change at all.

Then, you're going to select the very top layer (my "Layer 1 copy 2") and apply a vector mask.

Once you've done that, click on the vector mask and go to Image->Apply Image, and select Layer 1 from the dropdown menu.

Then click on the image itself and go to Filter->Other->High Pass. I used 0.5 pixels, but it'll really depend on your image. It should look something like this:

Then put that image on Linear Light and you should get something like this:

Not only is that not very believable, but it's got a blurred background too. So we're going to make a new layer and using another color, we're going to go over the skin areas. This is what you get afterwards. (For best results, cover only skin. I covered eyebrows and eyes and such, which isn't the best idea. But this is just a quick tutorial, so we'll live, right?)

Then you're going to click on Group 1 and click apply vector mask, just as you did before. Then hold down Ctrl and click on the layer we just created to cover skin and press Ctrl and backspace. That should make what you have selected black.

Delete Layer 2, deselect everything, go to the vector mask for Group 1, and press Ctrl and i. This should invert the colors, leaving the skin blurred and the background normal.

Now, it still doesn't look very believable, so change the opacity of the group. I put it at 75% for this example, but like everything in graphics, it's up to you to decide what fits or doesn't fit.

Let's do a side by side comparison, shall we?

Happy editing!

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