Method 5 - Using select colour

This has to be the most advanced technique but an excellent one. I normally do this as a last thing to do but if you are a creative type this method by itself can make the skin look 'wet'.

" this may possibly be my only "trick." This has to be done as a final step or it will magnify any so-called-flaws that are white in nature. Make a new empty layer on top of everything. with pure white selected as the foreground color in the tool bar go to Select > Color Range. The whites of the image should already be selected by
default. Move the fuzziness slider so the slightest dusting of selection will be made (click selection radio vs. image radio), hit OK. Fill this selection with white. Mask or erase out what is too
much. sometimes i blur this layer a bit "

Step 1 - Select the highlights

Set your foreground brush colour to white.

Next we want to select all the highlights in your image. Click Select>Color Range...

This should bring up a dialogue with all the whites automatically selected. Change the fuzziness slider so that it has a good range of highlights.

Fig 16.

Click OK.

Step 2 - Add the highlights

Create a new layer. Then hit ALT-BACKSPACE. This will fill the selection from the previous step with white.

Press CTRL-D to deselect your selection.

What this will do is add a white overlay over ALL of your highlights.

Step 3 - Mask away what is too much

Add a layer mask (mentioned earlier) and paint away with a slow flowing, soft black brush the areas that are just too much.

Step 4 - Add a blur to the layer

Amy says she sometimes adds a blur to the layer. This really depends on what you are after. If you don't add a blur I find it makes the skin look 'wet' and adds a sheen to the skin. Blurring softens this effect, but of course it's up to you. I used a very slight blur of 0.9 radius.

Remember that we are blurring the actual white layer and not the mask. Click on the layer contents rather than the mask before blurring.

Here is the image after the highlight layer using this method. As before roll over the image to get to the previous step.

Fig 17.

Hopefully you can see that this method has a massive impact on the final image.

Advanced Optional Steps - My personal preferences on this

I've played with this technique for a while and found a few different options

Instead of doing a colour range select on the whole RGB image I get some better results from just the blue channel. In the channels palette I select just the blue layer and copy it. I then do a curves adjustment to really bring out the highlights. Do a colour range select (with white as your foreground colour) and then carry on at Step 2. This can really make skin look extremely wet.

Rather than paint away the effect to get rid of unwanted highlights, it's sometimes easier to create a black mask. You can ALT-CLICK the 'create mask' icon which will remove the highlights completely (i.e. create a black mask). Then I slowly paint back the highlights with a soft white brush.
I sometimes reduce the opacity of this layer. It can dramatically impact your image. Possibly even play with blending modes.

And that's it really. Let's finalise.