Frequency separation - my mind has been blown!

[harryduns]

Last night I spent about 4 hours reading and digesting a thread on Model Mayhem about frequency separation in retouching. It's going to revolutionise the way I do my edits, for sure - just thought others who may not be aware of it could be interested.

This is not for the faint-hearted or anyone who does not already have a grasp of retouching in Photoshop, but if you persevere with it you'll find it an incredibly powerful and intuitive way of sharpening, retouching skin and many more applications! Mo0reover, it saves a huge amount of time over traditional dodge and burn techniques.

http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=439098

 

[Kerioak]

I use dodge and burn as well as frequency separation - it takes some practice doesn't it

 

[nickshek]

I find FS particularly useful for the healing stage - it kind of optimises the effect of the heal tool as you can work on purely just the skin texture without affecting colour and tone.

I normally even out skin texture on the HF layer and then D+B to even out tones. Takes ages!

 

[MacPingu]

Gee whizz, this has has just taken me an a bit of a mega journey.

Seems I have lost hours after following the link, and have been drawn into the murky world of deconvolution and algorithms. More suitable for forensics and scientists than my own needs, but a fascinating read nonetheless.

When my eyes can focus properly again (ah the perils of surfing late at night) I will give the method a play, and see how it compares to some of the usual techniques I play with.

Thanks for posting the link Harry.

 

[harryduns]

Thanks for posting the link Harry.

No worries! I was the same after my first marathon readthrough! I know it all seems a bit technical at first, but actually once you start using it practically it's very intuitive. Just use one of the actions those guys created and it'll all become apparrent. You can do all sorts of cool stuff, such as cloning out the detail of large blemishes on to High layer, whilst evening out skin tone on the Low layer without altering the pore texture. The real cool stuff begins when you use adjustment layers with a clipping mask to alter the High layer - Curves with a bit of an S shape suddenly gives you an amzing High Pass overlay-type sharpening effect, but much more pleasing. There are so many possibilities!

 

[St-ephen]

I use the <image><calculations> command then use add or subtract using the channels that are most different when you look at them. Inverting one of them usually.