Where, oh where, have you been all my life Image Doctor? I was really impressed with this plugin. It was easy to use, did not slow my system down and worked like a charm. I am an amateur photographer and as such, I enjoy photographing friends and family and capturing special occasions. One problem I seem to encounter frequently is too much shine from a slightly oily complexion. I was very interested to try it out for myself and see if Image Doctor could live up to its promises.

(photo 1) Here is photo I took of my friend and her husband. They wanted an outdoor portrait session but it was hot that day and by the end of the session we were all a little shiny and sweaty and unfortunately, it showed in the photographs.

(photo 2)  I'll zoom in on my friend and get started with her. The first thing I will do is create a copy of the layer for non-destructive editing. That way if I don't like it, I can start again with the original layer. (Some of Alien Skins plug-ins have non-destructive editing built in.)

(Photo 3) Next I used Photoshop's Lasso tool to select the area I'd like to improve.

(Photo 4) Now, down to business. I go under Filter > Alien Skin Image Doctor 2 > Skin Softener to bring up the filter options and preview box. There are several different Skin Softener presets to choose from which you can then tweak under the Basic tab to achieve the desired effect. There are also a number of preview options (highlighted in the red box) to assist you in determining the best result. Here I used a split preview which split the selection in half, vertically, so that I could see the before and after.

(Photo 5) Once you have the filter settings to your liking, click the save button from the filter options box to commit your changes.

(Photo 6) Since I was pleased with the initial results, I went ahead and selected other areas in the photo that I thought could use improving and applied the Skin Softener filter.

(Photos 7 and 8) Here you can see the before and after images of my friend and her husband.

I have tried using Photoshop's native tools to achieve similar retouching in the past, however, I found Image Doctor to be much easier and quicker to use while yielding much better results. Overall, I was highly impressed with Alien Skin's Image Doctor 2 plug-in and I know I will put to good use in the future.