I use this all the time and it is adjustable for the degree of softness you'd like. I use it on portrait and other images to take away the digi look:
1. Make duplicate copy
2. Make duplicate layer
3. Add 10 px guassian blur to dup layer
4. Adjust opacity to anywhere from 30 to 50% depending on degree of softening required.
5. Add USM of 20%, 60 px, 0 threshold
6. Add mask (click square with circle at bottom of layers pallete) to duplicate layer
7. Make sure foreground color is black and background to white, and with soft edge brush paint in (use your choice of opacity) details from background the details you would like sharp, such as eyes jewelry, hair etc.
Works for me....Dave

Scrubber wrote:
> I seem to remember some months ago a discussion concerning a
> special plug-in that one could buy which gave a dramatic smooth
> look to portraits and skin tones that couldn't easily (if at all)
> be replicated by other 'soft-focus' or smoothing plug-ins / filters.
> The search engines are down and for the life of me I cannot find
> any information about what the name of this software was. I can
> only remember it wasn't cheap but seemed to be highly regarded by
> the portrait pros.
> Do you guys have any idea what I'm on about?
> Would appreciate you input, I remember the before/after sample
> picutres that were posted were stunning, turned a snapshot into a
> model photo..
>
> Kind regards
>
> Steve.