I painted a face and couldn't get the skin as smooth as I want it and I tried the dream smoothing with the iterations set at 1 and the rest default. It is on a transparent backgroud and when I run the filter, the background turns black. Is it supposed to do that? I want to keep it transparent.

Hi molly see my comment at the bottom of this post
In that example, I ran the Dream Smoothing on a copied layer then was able to Alpha to Selection the original, Invert and Cut the black out.
Maybe try the Thin Brush Smoothing instead?

ok, thanks fluffy, I didn't know there was a thin smoothing. I will try it first. Where is it. I never Use gmic for that reason, I can never find what I want, just too many to look through.

Repair->Smooth [Thin Brush]
Yes the menu IMO is the biggest let down of what is a brilliant tool and equally as brilliant set of filters.
If only you could type into a menu selection field say 'smooth' and a subset of matching results were displayed...

I do recall this being asked for before though and a response was given explaining why it could not.

My tip is when you do find what you are looking for, click the 'star' button so it adds it to your Favourites section...

Edit: I think this topic covers it all http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=8124

Thank you again Fluffy.

wow, I just learned two new things merely by reading this….that you can star a filter to add it favorites and that you can make a selection to run a filter on to keep other parts with transparency!

3 things, lol

I've had good results using this filter once the image is completed and flattened, without an alpha channel.

I didn't know about running it on a new layer and also about the star for saving. thanks fluffy and Graechan.

@ Molly
1)transparency replaced by the BG color IS a bug and should be reported to the filter author

2)Dream Smoothing and Thin Smoothing are not too much similar
Dream Smoothing is a Artistic filter, Thin Smoothing is not even a "real" filter , it is a "fav" of GMIC>Repair> Smooth[Anisotropic}

Thank you PC, you are much more savvy on these gmic filters than me, as I said I don't use them too often because of the search thing.
I was impressed by the smoothing filter, I will just have to try and see which one works best for smoothing skin.