questions about custom facemasks (edit custom rig? skinblending?)

[sohlenmade]

hey, 

 

i started creating some custom facemasks or overlays. i had some decent results. but im still looking for ways to improve. i just used irfanview, gimp, a premade facemask and sims 4 studio. i ve watched some tutorials, where they edited a custom rig with photoshop. sadly i dont have photoshop. but im wondering is there another way to edit that custom rig before creating the facemask?

the other main issue is skinblending. so i mostly use overlays with greyscale texture and composition method 3 now and then i use smearing and blur effect with gimp. is there a better or easier way to make the skin blend in better?

 

oh and sometimes my game freezes. probably because i use a lot of cc. is there an easy method to filter out bad/outdated cc? currently when i download new cc i ran a quick search with clonespy to delete duplicates. but maybe there is a easier better way somehow? i dont want to apply the 50/50 method again for some time at least.