Cleaning up skin tones, Shake script not working

Hi,

You forgot the Over node at the end, which combines blurred skin with clear BG.

Looking at the alpha channel of the SwitchMatte node, I see that the matte
is not very good, so I inserted an Expand node to push up the skin, but leave
the eyes and lips clear.

Finally, I backed off on your Blur to make things a little more natural.
The effect smooths out small textural details like pores and freckles,
but doesn't work on big things like the scar. BTW, if you crank up the
blur, you get a cool cartoon or watercolor effect.

I hope that answers your question.

Les Stuck

N870177trythis = SFileIn("./870177trythis.jpg", "Auto", 0, 0,
"v1.1", "0", "");
Blur1 = Blur(N870177trythis, 20, xPixels/GetDefaultAspect(),
0, "gauss", xFilter, "rgba");
Saturation1 = Saturation(N870177trythis, 4);
Expand1 = Expand(Saturation1, 0.9, 0, 0, 0, 1, rHi, rHi, 1);
SwitchMatte1 = SwitchMatte(Blur1, Expand1, 1, "R", 1, 0);
Over1 = Over(SwitchMatte1, N870177trythis, 1, 0, 0);


// User Interface settings

SetKey(
"nodeView.Blur1.t", "0",
"nodeView.Blur1.x", "80.04309",
"nodeView.Blur1.y", "259",
"nodeView.Expand1.t", "0",
"nodeView.Expand1.x", "200.75",
"nodeView.Expand1.y", "213.25",
"nodeView.N870177trythis.t", "1",
"nodeView.N870177trythis.tnChannel", "0",
"nodeView.N870177trythis.tnTime", "1",
"nodeView.N870177trythis.tnVisible", "1",
"nodeView.N870177trythis.x", "183.043091",
"nodeView.N870177trythis.y", "401.2044",
"nodeView.Over1.t", "0",
"nodeView.Over1.x", "378.5",
"nodeView.Over1.y", "69.25",
"nodeView.Saturation1.t", "0",
"nodeView.Saturation1.x", "195.043091",
"nodeView.Saturation1.y", "259",
"nodeView.SwitchMatte1.t", "0",
"nodeView.SwitchMatte1.x", "65.79309",
"nodeView.SwitchMatte1.y", "153"
);

You might want to also consider masking the edges from the blur, this will allow you to smooth (blur) surfaces more without making the details too soft, (Use a convolve or an edgedetect to modulate an iBlur node.)

SFileIn1 = SFileIn("//Tinman/Users/Bill/Desktop/870177trythis.jpg",
"Auto", 0, 0, "v1.1", "0", "");
Bytes1 = Bytes(SFileIn1, 2);
EdgeDetect1 = EdgeDetect(SFileIn1, 4.9, 0.47312, 1, 0, 0, 10,
27.8, xBlur/GetDefaultAspect(), 1.5, xDilateErode/GetDefaultAspect(),
0, 0, "Sobel", 8, 1);
Invert1 = Invert(EdgeDetect1, "rgba");
IBlur1 = IBlur(Bytes1, Invert1, 20, xPixels/GetDefaultAspect(),
0, "triangle", "triangle", 5, 1, "R", "rgba", 0);


// User Interface settings

SetKey(
"nodeView.Bytes1.t", "0",
"nodeView.Bytes1.x", "158",
"nodeView.Bytes1.y", "341",
"nodeView.EdgeDetect1.t", "0",
"nodeView.EdgeDetect1.x", "272",
"nodeView.EdgeDetect1.y", "386",
"nodeView.IBlur1.t", "0",
"nodeView.IBlur1.x", "186",
"nodeView.IBlur1.y", "233",
"nodeView.Invert1.t", "0",
"nodeView.Invert1.x", "311",
"nodeView.Invert1.y", "315",
"nodeView.SFileIn1.t", "1",
"nodeView.SFileIn1.tnChannel", "0",
"nodeView.SFileIn1.tnTime", "1",
"nodeView.SFileIn1.tnVisible", "1",
"nodeView.SFileIn1.x", "211.25",
"nodeView.SFileIn1.y", "546.375"
);

P.S.

Ooops....
Neglected to mention the upsample (bytes node) Normally when I blur to remove grain I upsample to 16 bits to prevent adding (8bit) banding, though that node is not really necessary (in this case).

BTW it is the blue channel in that image that is causing you most of the problem, the noise and compression artifacts (in blue) are horrid.

Glad it worked for you.
Basically it uses a edgedetect to find the edges (details) then fattens (dilate) and blurs them to use as a mask. This edge mask (inverted ) is used to control the blur in the iblur node (which is also fed the main image from the filein), so basically it (iblur node) only blurs where details weren't found.

I took a screen shot of an AB compare / blue only. Not only can you see just how rough the blue channel is but also that the despeckle script gets the bulk of it without completely torching details.
http://idisk.mac.com/holderness/Public/Concept/BlueAB.tiff

Whenever you blur you can easily create banding in 8 bit color (particularly in luma ramps), the jump to 16 bit color (via bytes node) ensures that you don't introduce banding with the blur. (though with this source I don't think you would notice any banding (the more grain, the less you see banding) so you could likely delete or disable the bytes node in this case (as it does increase the processing load.)