I used to work for a magazine publishing company as a photo editor (long before I started taking photos myself) and learned a lot from my former boss about post processing photos of models/people. Being able to know what photo editors do, I always try to shoot photos now that requires little or no post processing at all because we all, well, most of us know that the more you photoshop a photograph, the more you destroy its pixels.
We've always been told that nobody is perfect. Physically, even models have flaws... pimples, wrinkles, scars, etc etc. What most people do when editing photos is like what I mentioned earlier, use 3rd party actions. These actions usually take the details off the skin of the subject by blurring off those details making the skin look smooth. Downside is, the skin will look unnatural... like the texture of a mannequin.
When editing off skin imperfections, I use the healing brush and stamp tools, making sure that my brush size is not bigger than 10 (for a photo from a 12 or 15 megapixel camera). This helps to retain the texture of the skin and as much as possible I keep some little imperfections to make the photo look unedited. It usually takes me 2 to 4 hours editing a 12-15MP photograph. A li'l practicing with the healing brush tool and you'll be able to master using it.
(click images to zoom in)
original image
edited using the healing brush and stamp tools
with Imagenomic's Noise Reduction in Portrait setting
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