Ed's curves and Lee Varis

[sjordan93436]

I know this may be old hat to you guys.  Lee Varis posted on his blog a new (?) technique to smooth skin.

http://blog.varis.com/2011/04/28/skin-smoothing-technique/

Outline form.  With blotchy skin.

1.  Copy  Control I to invert copy.

2.  Blend mode to vivid light.

3.  Filter- high pass.  Adjust just looking at skin.  Look for smooth

3.  Filter-  Gaussian blur.  Adjust radius to see skin texture.

4.  Add black layer mask and paint with white to show skin texture.

Weird.

Ed's curves  (Varis again)

http://blog.varis.com/2011/03/04/eds-curves/

Definitely a weird curve.  Fixes banding in skies.  The screen shot is my screen shot.

Lee Varis is very good, but alas, he is a Mac (non CM) user. 

Also,  Russell Brown has interesting videos on panoramas, masking, and puppet warp.  www.russellbrown.com