Soften Skin brush is darkening skin

[norak527]

I'm trying to use the soften skin brush tool, but it's darkening the skin instead. It makes the skin look bruised or something...looks awful. First photo is the original photo, and the second photo I used the soften skin brush on top of her cheek--see the dark blob there. Third photo shows my soften skin brush panel settings (just the default).

And no, the darkness is not just the gray mask overlay showing what skin I've painted over. The darkened area shows up after I click "enter" to see the final product after applying the brush. I used to have LR 4 and this definitely didn't happen. My soften skin brush used to work great. What gives? I can't figure this out. I want to remove the under-eye wrinkles, but instead the brush makes it look like she has dark circles under her eyes! Help!

[JoeKostoss · Accepted solution]

The preset brushes are meant be treated as starting points for a particular image, not hard and fast rules for each image.  In some cases they work great as is, while in others you may have to tweak the sliders.  In this case, you may want to try to lower sharpness and/or increase shadows slightly to the lighter side (Move to the Right).  You may also want to play with Density which you have set to 31.  If you find a set of slider settings that work well with most of your images, save it as a new user preset brush.  You do not have to accept the Lightroom brushes as they are.  Use your imagination and skills to tweak things to your liking.