Adwb, that isn't a bad idea, apply it as a layer mask or something.. I might eventually try that. I have however noticed it really does bring out a lot of imperfections in the skin, as mentioned above, due to bringing in the lighting from the shadows, midtones, and highlights. Now, thankfully for me, she has relatively good skin, which means a little less time in PP
I didn't really do much to these photos to be honest, all I did was apply the HDR effect (By merging the images in Nik HDR Efex Pro 2) then apply a brightness/contrast filter, and dropped the brightness, and brought up the contrast a bit.