In case you've never noticed, the visual texture of human skin is extremely subtle and complex. Far from being a mere collection of surface features, in addition, human skin reveals layers of additional complexity beneath.  Its appearance is also altered as the viewing and lighting angles change.

Skin is therefore one of the most difficult effects for the users of image editing programs to render convincingly.  One of the most difficult aspects to produce is the random patterns of color on the skin.  SkinTexture attempts to address this part of the problem by rendering a simulation of the "mottled" appearance onto a user supplied image.

This program was originally developed as part of a project and was nearly forgotten.  Instead of letting it molder away in a dark corner of my PC's disk, I wrote a minimal interface and to make it usable by others.  As with most one-off, ad hoc programs, SkinTexture has a pretty clunky interface.  So you'll have to run it separately from your image editing program.

Installing:
Create a directory called SkinTexture on your hard drive
Copy SkinTexture.exe into the created directory

Using SkinTexture:
In your image editor, select the area of skin to be treated and save as a 24-bit (RGB) BMP file
Start SkinTexture.exe
Load into SkinTexture (File, Open).  (Gradient.bmp is included as a sample file.)
Open the Control dialog (Ctrl-T)
'Detail Variation' sets the contrast of the mottling
'Smoothness' sets smoothness of the details.  If the input image is of skin viewed from a distance increase 'Smoothness'
'Centerweight' controls the weighting of each pixel versus the pixels surrounding it

Suggestions:
For the first few tries, start with the default values.
Before using SkinTexture, the user should apply gross blemishes such as scars, veins, etc., to the image.
If the details are too sharp try applying a slight Gaussion blur in an image editor.  Start with a radius of about 0.3
Another method of diminishing detail size is to increase the size by 100% prior to treatment by the program and decreasing by 50% after treatment

Some notes:
Areas of the image containing skin viewed at oblique angles may have to be processed separately
SkinTexture is most effective at creating the effects as seen from 6 feet (2 meters) or more
SkinTexture has not been tested on images containing dark complexions

Warranty:
This program and information is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied.  Marginal Software is not responsible for any defects or damage this program may cause.
