SKIN!!

Some basic skin softening techniques.
Workflow: Do you exposure adjustment in ACR. Create "empty layers" for your retouching you can clone and use healing brush in empty layers and it won't add "weight" to your file as it would if you were to add layer copies.Remember to rename these layers so that you can find your corrections quickly and easily. To adjust exposure, color or tones locally create a merged copy of your layers CMD+Shift+Option+E make a selection of the area that you want to adjust and create a new layer with only the selected area on it. Open up an adjustment layer make your adjustment and mask the adjusted area into the image.By working with smaller selected areas again you will not be adding to your file size greatly.Remember that adjusting your exposure will also affect your color. Once you have done all of your adjustments, create a new merged layer copy, CMD J to make a layer copy with the first copy "active" make a color range selection of the skin. Select skin with the lasso too. Invert selection. shift delete to bring up fill dialogue and fill with black.soften or feather edges of your mask to smooth ant transition areas. With thumbnail active go to the filters menu,choose blur. choose Dust and Scratches use the threshold and radius to create the effect that you want. Remember that you don't want to remove texture just make it look more even. You can adjust the opacity of you layer if you find that you went too far. Also you could come back to this softened layer and add a low level of noise 2% to add a type of false texture to the skin.Make sure that you use monochromatic noise.
Another approach would be to do all of the adjustments, make the new merged copy then go to your filters menu choose blur choose the blur that you prefer.Add a layer mask filled with black, do a color range selection of the skin to create your mask
add a new merged copy go to filter -other -high pass and use highpass sharpening to add some texture to the skin change your layer blend mode to "soft light"