Hi all,
I'm lucky enough to be shooting with lovely primes (35, 85, 135) but I'm having problems with them !
they're really really sharp and that's brilliant for the hair, eyes, lips and stuff like that but the skin very often shows pores quite a lot. I tend to use the skin smoother in lightroom so far but struggle to find the right balance between removing pores and making the face not look too "glowy".
What are you guys doing ? Do you take all portraits in photoshop or have some better systems (ie quick and effective)?
Thanks for your help

neither of them is all that sharp wide open, just use wider apperture when you can (for portraiture most of the time better anyway)
maybe you can step down from sharpening if you have it set in camera.

but ... examples showing your point would help ...

Soft lighting can help, by minimizing the tiny shadows and highlights in and around pores and blemishes, while still allowing sharp lenses to record hair and other details sharply.

If that's not enough, then selective softening in Photoshop or use of an automated program like Portrait Professional might be needed to get the results you want.

Here's how I do it in Photoshop Elements 6:

Create a Levels adjustment layer (for masking)
Create a Duplicate layer of the original photo
Apply the High Pass filter to the duplicate, with a radius of 3
Apply the Gaussian Blur filter to the duplicate with a radius of 1
Invert the layer, and set the Blending Mode to Linear Light
Using the Paint Bucket, fill the layer mask with black -- this obscures the duplicate layer
Using the paint brush, paint with white to reveal the softened duplicate only in the areas needed, like forehead, cheeks, neck, etc., but not the eyes, lips, etc.
Adjust the opacity of the mask (or duplicate layer) to get the degree of softnening you want.

It sounds complicated, but once you've done it a few times it goes quickly. If you're using software with a better masking capability than Elements 6, it's even easier.

Shown below are "Before" and "After" views of a portrait I did recently, and a screen shot of the workflow.

Lightroom that Sh$T!