Skin retouching techniques without blurring

[kingwee]

Hello everyone, I've been using skin blurring technique I learned here (dust&scratches) for retouching skin. I've recently learned (from modelmayhem forums) that this technique is not the best for high quality retouching. While I am trying to not spend an hour per image, I would like to know what non-blurring technique people are using here. I read a lot of variations of dodge and burn, but I've yet to have any success using that method. Here is a link to more of what I'm talking about..

http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=286223

FYI, right now, I'm doing a whole lot of healing brush at high magnification and still using the blurring dust&scratches technique, then layering over it a texture layer from the original (copied then high pass) to bring back some of the natural skin texture. It's taking me way longer per image, but the skin looks way more real and unretouched.

So, please share your non-blurring skin retouching technique! Thanks!