{improving cap quality}
1) I open up this cap of Lucas and Peyton. It's zoomed out a bit, but when you actually do the work, it's best if the cap is at 100% when you're working on it.2) Duplicate the layer (layer>duplicate layer). Go to filter>noise>median. For my radius I put '5', but if you're working with a smaller cap or one that has better quality, you should go with a lower radius.
3) This will look very smoothed, so go to your layer panel and for the duplicated layer with the median, set the blending options to normal 50%.
4) I still think this looks too smooth out in certain parts. So I'm going to add a mask to the duplicated layer. In the layer panel, there's a bunch of icons on the bottom. Click on the one second from left that looks like a grey rectangle with a white circle in it. In the layer panel, a blank white box will appear beside the duplicated layer. This is how things look:
5) Now I take a soft round with a diameter of 17-35. I chose the blending options normal, opacity 65% and flow 100%. The colour must be black. I then brush over the eyes, mouth, nose or anywhere else that I don't want to be too smoothed out. Masking is like erasing, brushing the layer mask with black will erase in that area and brushing it with white will get it back. After I'm done masking I flatten the image (layer>flatten image).
6) I then go to filter>other>high pass. And set my radius at 2. Then I go to edit>fade high pass, and put my opacity at 70% and my mode at overlayer. This will give the cap some more definition.
7) Most of the time, step 6 is what I end with. But sometimes when I feel that the quality is still too bad I do this step. Duplicate the layer (layer>duplicate layer) and then go to filter>blur>gaussian blur and set the radius to 2.
8) Then add a layer mask to the duplicated layer. Take the paint bucket tool (if you can't find it, right click the gradient tool and you will find it.) and then fill the mask with black. So now the whole layer is masked. Then I take soft round brush tool before with the mode at normal and opacity at 65-80% and the colour must be at white. I then brush the parts I feel need to be smoothed our more. It's important to not brush over lines or eyes that are supposed to be in the cap because I don't want to lose definition. So I just brush over things such as arms, cheeks (not the lines that define them!) and foreheads. After masking, I flatten the image(layer>flatten image).
And now I'm done. I've went from this to this.
