I am student and I am trying to learn how to retouch. I am currently using an inverted highpass filter and masking the skin and also just started experimenting with the mixer brush tool, I like the soft skin look it gives but I feel it makes the skin way too soft and leave no texture to the skin.

Any suggestions or tips on how you guys airbrush.
Thank you for your time

I use all values around 20% opacity.

Better learn dodge & burn techniques.

I use Frequency Separation at 100% opacity, which usually looks way too plastic-ish for my taste but does retain sharpness/skin texture. From there, I use the "blend if" layer menu/option to balance everything. All in all, I think it's best to learn whatever technique that works for you (in my case it was Phlearn (YouTube) Frequency Seperation) then build on it from there to customize your look/workflow.

Thank you everyone! You have all been super helpful

Hi,
I use Frequency Separation the most for skin retouching.  Need to learn to work with very small brush and be very patient for retouching skin texture. I suggest don't overwork on skin colour blend with Gaussian Blurr - it makes skin look flat.