Hey peeps,
I don't do much portrait photography, but I've just discovered this excellent piece of software that makes retouching portraits a breeze. It's called
Portrait Professional and you can find it here:
Portrait Professional - Enhance your photos using the best airbrushing and photo editing software
Although Photoshop is obviously the most powerful tool for this kind of thing, Portrait Professional is much easier and quicker to use, and may even provide the only tweaks you need. Even if it doesn't, it can still do the bulk of the work before you load up the image in
PS to apply the final touches.
Check out the attached example, using a sample image from another software package. This literally took me about 2 minutes to do in Portrait Professional. It doesn't just smooth out wrinkles and remove skin blemishes, it also remodels the facial features (widening and brightening the eyes, plumping up the lips etc.) but in a way that's so subtle that it's not obvious until you compare the results with the original.