Blur / Patch Tool
As you can see we have a photo that doesn't look great. Her skin is oily and needs to be smoothed out. Let's copy the layer by hitting CTRL+J. Now lets blur it by clicking Filter, Blur then Gaussian Blur set it to 1.2 and hit OK. Now we have the image blurred a little to hide the skin problems. However we don't want her eyes blurred out so let's use the eraser tool and use it on her eyes. This will allow her eyes to shine through. Now let's use the patch tool. What we want to do here is hold the mouse button down near a skin blimish. Draw a circle around the blimish then release. Next click inside of the circle you just created and drag to another area of the skin that looks similiar. This will take some of the clicked area and blend with the source. The result is normally great and is a fast easy way to remove skin problems. You should now have something as shown below.
Desaturate
Now let's copy the lay we were just working. What we are going to do is desaturate by clicking Image, Adjustments, Desaturate. This will take our layer and make it grey. Now change the mode from Normal to Overlay, change Opacity to 72% and Fill to 44%. This will overlay the grey image on top of our celebrity and bring out the darker tones. It really makes a big difference. What I also did was erase the area behind her so it was not effected.
Time for a hair color change
Ok, looking better. Now let's change that hair, it looks awful. What I did was make a new layer and select a light color and paint all over her hair. Change the mode to Color Burn and notice the difference. Her hair now has more of a contrast. I'll leave the mode Normal on the below image so you can see. I then zoomed in on the eyes and painted a lighter color of blue in a new layer. Then I made that layer 53% opacity and 45% fill. In another layer I painted her pupils black, opacity and fill was not changed.
Make up!
Now let's add some makeup! This is very similar to the way we colored her hair. I made another layer and painted a lighter color of her face. Color all over, don't worry if you go too far - you can erase later. I'll then change the opacity to 50% to make it blend in. In the below example I left it at 100% so you could see how it looks. Now I noticed it was a little too bright so I added another layer on top with a slightly darker color and changed to 49%. Now for the final touch, let's go back to our original layer and select the burn tool. Use this tool around the sides of her face and under the eyes. This will darker these areas and make it more organic and not just one solid color. I also like to go back to our blur layer and erase around the hair. Now we have our hair layer on top anyway removing the blur around the hair really brings out the detail and shine with the new color. The resulting image shown as the last image.
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