Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace: How to use frequency separation to retouch your portraits

 

 

One of the most powerful techniques for retouching skin in Adobe Photoshop is frequency separation. Photographer and educator Mark Wallace doesn’t want to stop there with an editing tutorial, but rather walks us through the entire process, from capture to final editing, in the newest episode of Adorama's Exploring Photography.

When used correctly, frequency separation is particularly good for retouching skin because it removes blemishes and imperfections without making skin totally smooth. It's important to preserve the texture and pores which make skin look real.

After showing his lighting setup, Wallace starts his frequency separation editing process. To start, you want to make two copies of your background layer. The bottom layer will be blurred to create a low frequency layer and the top layer will be edited into a high frequency layer. The latter layer will be used for adjusting luminosity, tones and colors and the former layer will be used for editing textures. To see the full process, which is much simpler than it sounds, watch Wallace's video below.

To see more videos from Adorama, click here. To view all of Mark Wallace's previous Exploring Photography videos, click here.

(Via Adorama)