Overview
Portraiture solves the retouching problem that every general purpose blur fails at. It masks skin by colour range rather than by area, then smooths the tonal variation while leaving high frequency detail intact, which is why the result still has pores and the subject still looks like a person. A frequency separation done by hand gets there too, but it takes twenty minutes per frame and this takes seconds.
This is the licensed build, so exports are clean and the batch processing that makes it usable on a whole shoot is available rather than restricted. It installs as a plug-in inside Photoshop and Lightroom, appearing in the filter menu and the external editor list respectively, and it runs on an existing installation without touching anything else.
How the masking works
The skin mask is built from a colour range that you set by picking from the image, with tolerance controls for hue, saturation and brightness spread. The mask preview shows exactly what is being treated, and getting that mask right is ninety percent of a good result. A mask that catches a wooden background or a tan jacket will smooth those too, which is the usual cause of a bad first attempt.
Once the mask is correct it can be saved as a preset along with the smoothing settings, and applied to every other frame from the same setup. That is where the time saving comes from on a real job, since a shoot under consistent lighting needs the mask set once and reused for hundreds of frames.
Smoothing without destroying texture
The detail controls are split across three frequency bands, fine, medium and large. Fine holds pores and the smallest texture, medium handles the variation that reads as blotchiness, and large deals with broad tonal unevenness across a face. Pulling medium and large down while leaving fine near the top is the setting that produces a natural result, and it is a completely different look from a single smoothing slider.
There are also enhancement controls for warmth, tint, brightness and contrast applied only inside the mask, which lets skin be corrected separately from the rest of the frame without a second adjustment layer. Sharpness can be added back inside the mask as well, which counteracts the slight softening that any smoothing introduces.
Working it into a real workflow
In Photoshop, run it on a duplicated layer or a smart object so the effect stays adjustable and can be masked back by hand where it went too far. Around the eyes and lips especially, painting the effect back out at fifty percent produces a far better result than letting it run at full strength across the whole face.
In Lightroom it works as an external editor round trip, which is less flexible but much faster for volume work. The batch mode processes a folder against a saved preset with no interaction at all, which is how a wedding or an event shoot with several hundred frames gets through retouching in an evening instead of a week.
What you get
- Colour range skin masking with live mask preview
- Three band detail control preserving pores and fine texture
- Skin only warmth, tint, brightness and contrast enhancement
- Sharpness restoration inside the mask
- Saveable presets combining mask and smoothing settings
- Batch processing across a folder with no interaction
- Photoshop filter and Lightroom external editor integration
- Works on smart objects so the effect stays adjustable
- Clean output with no watermark
Inside the archive
- Portraiture 4 plug-in installer for Photoshop and Lightroom
- Default preset library
- Licence applied during install
- Readme with the supported host versions
System requirements
| Operating system | Windows 10 version 22H2 or Windows 11, 64-bit |
|---|---|
| Host application | Photoshop or Lightroom already installed |
| Processor | Any current x64 processor |
| Memory | 8 GB, matching the host requirement |
| Graphics | Any card with a current driver |
| Storage | 300 MB |
Installing it
- Close Photoshop and Lightroom completely.
- Run the installer as administrator and confirm the detected host folders.
- Finish setup. The licence is applied at the end of the install.
- Open Photoshop and find it under the filter menu, or set it as an external editor in Lightroom.
- Build a preset on one representative frame before batching a whole shoot.
Mirrors
| Route | Region | Note | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct, primary | Europe | No wait, resumable | Online |
| Direct, secondary | North America | No wait, resumable | Online |
| Torrent magnet | Global | Not needed at this size | Online |
Release history
- Mask generation improved across a wider range of skin tones
- Support added for the current Photoshop and Lightroom builds
- Batch processing no longer stops on a single unreadable file
- Fine detail band reworked to hold pore structure at higher smoothing
- Preset library expanded
- Processing speed improved on high resolution files
Questions about this release
Why does my background look smoothed too?
The mask is catching it. Narrow the colour range tolerance and check the mask preview before applying.
How do I keep the result from looking plastic?
Leave the fine detail band high and only pull the medium and large bands down. A single strong smoothing setting is what produces the plastic look.
Can it process a whole folder?
Yes, batch mode runs a saved preset across a folder with no interaction, which is what the licensed build unlocks.
Does it work non destructively?
In Photoshop yes, run it on a smart object and it stays adjustable and maskable afterwards.
Comments
Mask preview is what fixed my results. I was smoothing half the background without noticing.
On a smart object so I can paint it back around the eyes. Faster than frequency separation by a mile.
Comments are read before they appear. If a build stops working, say so here and it gets rebuilt rather than quietly left up.
Batched 900 frames overnight off one preset. Skin still has texture, which is the whole point.