Whether it's an inverted high pass filter, another layer with a Gaussian blur at partial opacity, the surface blur tool, or any other approach that purports to retouch all of the skin at once, these are all shotgun approachs that almost always yield an artificial look to the skin. The results of these approaches may wow unsophisticated mom-and-pop and teen / yearbook customers into thinking they look glamorous, but are never, EVER used by high end professional retouchers.
Instead, high end retouchers slowly work their way through the image, fixing things in tiny areas, blemish by blemish, using the patch, spot healing, clone stamp and similar tools. They may then use tools like "Color Mechanic" to make the hue and saturation of problem areas match the hue and saturation of good nearby skin. They may then use dodging, burning, and brushed on saturation to define bone structure, etc.
I'm not familiar with "Portraiture", the program you just purchased, but if you want to see an example of how many completely different types of skin adjustments are made even by an automated skin retouching program, download an evaluation copy of "Portrait Professional" and expand the adjustments tab. I haven't counted them all, but there probably has to be at least a couple of dozen different skin adjustments in that program. A good retoucher will make all of the adjustments seen plus more.
If you don't want to make all these changes yourself, first spot the face with the patch, clone and similar tools, then import the result into Portrait Pro, but instead of accepting the default settings, adjust the sliders manually and use the effects sparingly.
HTH,
Tom M
