Frequency Separation Also Known As Skin Retouching

So who's up for learning something new in editing today ? This is my first tutorial video ever!! and yeah I guess it came out pretty well most of it at least you'll notice a bit of glitch but thats only because I fast forwarded the boring parts of the tutorial, Any how let's get to it.

What is Frequency Separation ? Well it basically means is that we take the textures from an image and keep them in one layer and the tones, colours, shadows, etc of the image are separated in another layer. So when your retouching your image you can either work on the textures or work on the stuff underneath your textures.

It's a simple and efficient method to get rid of things like blotchiness, skin redness etc on the layer underneath the textures layer and use the textures layer to get rid of fines lines, wrinkles and things like that.

In the video I've used one of my test shots from an old shoot of mine with Shama to demonstrate Frequency Separation

Given below are the step by step guide of what's show in the video above which includes Keyboard Shortcuts for specific tools used in this precess.

• The first thing your going to do is load your image into Adobe Photoshop.

• Next you'll need to create 2 more copies of the background layer and you can do that by hitting Command + J on MAC Or CTRL + J on Windows.

• Now for your reference i've labeled one layer as Details and the other as Blur.

• Now make the Details layer invisible and select you Blur layer. To this Blur layer you'll will now apply a Gaussian Blur.

• You'll need to apply just enough blur to get rid of whatever you want to keep which is in our case the skin textures. So you'll need to make sure to give it just the right amount of blur so that the skin textures aren't visible.

• Now that you've applied a Gaussian Blur on the Blur layer you can make the Details layer visible again and we will apply a filter to this layer that takes the information out from this layer and subtract out the information on the Blur layer and leave out the difference.

• To do the make sure the Details layer is selected then go to Image option on the top and select Apply Image from the drop down menu.

• Next in Layers option you'll need to select the Blur layer and in the Blending option you'll need to select Subtract. Scale and Offset will be 2 and 128 by default.

• What you get now is the difference of both the layers and to add the texture back you'll need to change the Blending mode to Linear Light

• Well now this is where the actual work happens, Select the Blur layer and the then select your Lasso Tool by clicking L It remains same for MAC as well as WINDOWS.

• Make a selection on an area of the skin so as to remove any blotchiness, skin redness etc and on the top you'll see something called Feather you'll set this to around let say 25 to give a nice feathered edge to your selection (I've forgotten to set my feather option so this isn't exactly shown in the video)

• Now to this selection you will apply a Gaussian Blur and this time of a select a higher value so as to make the blotchiness, skin redness etc on the skin disappear.

• You'll need to repeat the last 2 steps all over the skin to make the blotchiness, skin redness etc on the skin disappear. (This repetition has been fast forwarded in the video)

• To see the changes you've make select the Details and Blur layer and Group them together by clicking on Command + G on MAC Or CTRL + G on Windows. Toggle the Group on and off to notice the final changes made.

• Now even hough we smoothened out her skin you can notice that all of her skin textures are still intact which is freaking amazing.

• So lets say you want to take care of the texture on the skin like getting rid of fine lines, wrinkles and things like that.

• Select the Details layer and then select the Spot Healing Tool by clicking J It remains same for MAC as well as WINDOWS
  

• Now just paint over the fine lines, wrinkles etc to get rid of them (This repetition has been fast forwarded in the video)

Well that's pretty much it not complicated at all LOL dont go downvoting my post I have a terrible sense of humour SIGH

Also if you guys end up following through and decide to use this technique and maybe decide to post it on HIVE please do tag me as well .

Have an amazing day folk's!!

Questions About Photography Are Welcome!
Upvote, Comment, Repost And Follow If You Like My Work!
Have A Great Day!