Portraiture plug-in, when do yo use it?

Hey guys. So I downloaded the free 15-day trial of the Portraiture plug-in for Lightroom yesterday and got to play with it a bit. I must say that I'm thouroughly impressed and really looking forward to using it more during the trial period before making the full purchase.

My question to those who use it: Where do you use it in your workflow? Do you run portraiture BEFORE the overall processing, or is it your last step to "polish off" the photo?

One of the general rules of retouching/post processing is that you work from the general to the specific. In other words you make the edits that affect the entire image first then the edits that are applicable to parts of the image. When I use Portraiture I usually mask the skin areas (the specific part of the rule) so its used after all the general processing is done but before final resizing and sharpening.

My Portraiture use is a bit different, I have it as a Photoshop plugin and use it after basic Raw adjustments, but before I start general processing. I use it with a low fine detail bias and a higher large detail bias to smooth out only large-scale detail and unevenness in skin, leaving most everything else intact, after which I zoom in and get to it with healing brush and dodge/burn via adjustment layers.

I wouldn't trust a plug-in to do more than 30% of the skin work for me, but it does help as a "first pass", since doing the same thing manually takes longer, and the result is largely the same.

I use Portraiture in PS instead of LR, but for me, its clean up the BIG skin issues first manually, then run Portraiture to a new layer, and decrease opacity to a level that looks natural (anywhere from 30-80 % depending on the image). Masking the skin layers is essential so that the rest of the image retains its original detail and sharpness.

mkrogemann wrote in post #16860911
I use Portraiture in PS instead of LR, but for me, its clean up the BIG skin issues first manually, then run Portraiture to a new layer, and decrease opacity to a level that looks natural (anywhere from 30-80 % depending on the image). Masking the skin layers is essential so that the rest of the image retains its original detail and sharpness.

I can see where that would be a benefit, but I downloaded the LR version so masking the skin isn't possible. I do most of my processing in LR which is why I snatched up the LR free trial over the PS version.