Skin smoothing is applied to images using a bilateral filter and aided by a skin map. In one example a method includes receiving an image having pixels at an original resolution. The image is buffered. The image is downscaled from the original resolution to a lower resolution. A bilateral filter is applied to pixels of the downscaled image. The filtered pixels of the downscaled image are blended with pixels of the image having the original resolution, and the blended image is produced.