How do I create this skin effect?

Thanks a lot everybody! I will try out those techniques and see how far I can come. Its definately been very helpfull so thank you all!

When Adobe did the 'I Am The New Creatives' campaign a few years ago, they asked artists to create a portait similar to theirs and to submit it.

I did this and was featured on their page.  They had a guide on how to do it.....

http://www.iamthenewcreative.com/index.html#p/join-us

Look at step 2, create your portrait.... there is a tutorial to download.

Granted you can skip the part where you add artwork to your face.  But this general idea is quite fun.  So just do the part of creating a white face.

The other part with image projecting on the face you can skip.

Then you can work on making the portait more plasticy... erase marks on the face, etc.  Create additional highlights and smooth everything.

MY GUESS IS THAT THE ORIGINAL IDEA THAT YOU SHARE WAS A 3D GRAPHIC and not a photograph.

I'm not sure what you want to do with her hair, but I got the skin to look pretty smooth with these settings using the Camera Raw filter

High

You could experiment with a combination of frequency retouching to soften the skin, a black and white adjustment layer set to lighten the reds/oranges curve to lighten and then painting with black/white brush on a layer set to overlay blend mode to bring out the glow

Dave

Another way might be to use B&W adjustment layers.

Create a copy of the red channel to use as a mask.

Use a B&W ajustment layer set to luminosity to lighten the reds.

Add another B&W layer with the red channel reversed as a mask:

Add a third B&W ajustment layer to convert all to B&W

Add curves to adjust the shadows.

Please post (a section of) the image you want to edit thusly.

Frequency separation might have been used, but with certain details manual masking or even painting could be necessary.