Why Does Retouched Skin Look Plastic? 6 Mistakes and How to Fix Them

What plastic skin actually is

Real skin has fine detail: pores, tiny hairs, small color changes and soft shadows. Plastic skin has lost that detail, so the surface looks uniform, like rubber or wax.

The cause is almost always the same: too much smoothing, applied too evenly.

Six common mistakes

1. Blurring the fine detail. A blur radius that is too large or applied to the wrong layer erases pores. 2. Smoothing everything equally, including areas that should keep texture such as nose, cheeks and forehead. 3. Removing every line and mark, so the face loses its character. 4. Stamping the same texture over every area. 5. Ignoring the shape of light, so the face goes flat. 6. Working only when zoomed in too far and never checking at normal size.

How to fix them

Use less. Fix blemishes and distractions one by one and leave the rest. Even out tone with dodge and burn, which adjusts light and shadow without removing texture. Keep small imperfections that make a face believable, such as faint lines and freckles.

Work in small areas, and check the whole face often. Keep the eyes, lips and eyebrows detailed, because the eye goes there first and flat skin next to sharp eyes looks wrong.

A quick check before you deliver

Look at the image at normal viewing size, then at 100%. Can you still see pores near the nose and cheeks? Do the shadows still shape the face? Turn the image to black and white for a moment: does it still look like a person and not a mask?

Show it to someone who has not seen the original. If they say it looks great but cannot say why, you got it right.

If you outsource

Tell your retoucher what natural means to you: show references and say what must stay, such as freckles and skin texture. At LightHouse Retouch we retouch by hand and keep real pores and texture, so the person still looks like themselves.

If you want to see the approach, look at our before-and-after examples.

See our portrait and headshot retouching →