Lightroom 2.0 makes it easy to open multiple images in a single file in Photoshop CS 3 (and, one of these days, in older versions and in Photoshop Elements). You can right click a selected image and the, under Open in Photoshop, you have options to Open as a Smart Object in Photoshop, Merge to a Panorama in Photoshop, Merge to HDR in Photoshop, or Merge as Layers in Photoshop.

Lightroom 2.0 also has a very nice skin-smoothing technique that you can apply as a localized Clarity adjustment by dragging the slider to a negative value. I especially like doing this on a high-key image. So I tried creating a Virtual Copy of the normally adjusted image of a portrait I shot the other day, raised the Exposure, Brightness, and Contrast to get the values I wanted in the face and then used the "inverse Clarity" regional adjustment to smooth the skin tones.

If you click on the image to the right, you'll see the copy of the portrait as I originally adjusted it on the left and the Virtual Copy as I adjusted it on the right. Lightroom 2.0 presently automatically puts Virtual Copies into a Stack, so I had to show the stack in a BA window. I could then select each image and open it in Photoshop CS3. Then I could choose File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. The Virtual Copy then loaded as the top layer. In the finished version of 2.0, you should be able to do this directly from Lightroom into Photoshpo and save yourself a few steps.

Now I could bring back some of the original tones in the hair, eyebrows, eyes, and lips by simply erasing through the high-key skin-smoothed layer by using the Eraser tool in Brush mode with Hardness reduced to none and Opacity reduced to about 30%. I also erased through in "blotches" to give a feeling of a textured background.

Next, I pressed Cmnd/Ctrl + Shift + Opt/Alt + E to merge both layers into an additional top layer and then used the Spot Healing Brush and the Patch tool to do some basic glamor retouching under the eyes and on the neck.