[PDF] Frequency Separation: Face Retouch - Masters Academy

78597_3MA_FrequencySeparation_Face.pdf

Frequency Separation: Face Retouch

Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved2

Frequency Separation: Face Retouch

In this lesson, we're going to revisit the top-

ic of frequency separation and we"re go- ing to use the technique to retouch a face.

Know that there is a separate lesson on

frequency separation that covers the basic concept, so if the technique is very new to you, consider visiting that lesson rst.

The rst image we"re going to work on fea-

tures a little girl who has some dried “stu" around her mouth (not an uncommon oc- currence with pictures of tiny kids). If it were simply a little spot of something, we could use a retouching tool like the Spot Healing Brush to remove it. What we have here is more of an undesirable texture, and using the Spot Healing Brush created a blotchy result.

Frequency separation Actions

The frequency separation technique requires you to set up your Photoshop doc- ument in a certain way. Because there are some technical qualities to the setup, and because the setup is always the same, I have created some actions that will do it for you. The actions will be available with the course downloads for this les- son. The actions are contained within a zipped le and you will rst need to dou- ble-click on the le (after downloading it) to unzip it. Then, double-click on the action le in order to install the action. Photoshop will come to the forefront on your screen, but you won"t see anything change. If you open the Actions panel (by going to the Window menu and choosing Actions), you will see the new ac- tion[s] at the bottom of the list within the panel.

The frequency separation technique can

be used to remove the undesirable tex- ture under the little girl"s nose. Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved3

If, for some reason, the action[s] did not

load into the Actions panel, you will need to install manually. To manually install an action, rst make sure that the Actions panel is open. Click on the little menu in the top right corner of the panel and choose “Load Actions" from the pop-up menu. You will be prompted to navigate to the location on your hard drive where the actions are located. (Make sure that you feed Photoshop the unzipped le.)

Retouch skin texture

Frequency separation divides your image into two layers. One layer will con- tain the overall brightness and colors of your image but none of the ne details. All of the ne details will have been moved to a separate layer. The detail layer will contain very little color information and very little brightness information. By separating the image in to these two parts, we"re able to work on the ne details separately from the general tone and color. With the image of the little girl, we want to work on the layer containing the de- tails/texture, while leaving the tone and color unchanged. There are two actions included with the lesson: “Frequency Separation: Choose Low" and “Frequency Separation: Choose High." If you want to see the layer with the ne details, use the “Choose High" option. If you want to see the layer with the general tones and colors, use the “Choose Low" option. With the example im- age of the little girl, we"ll use the “Choose Low" option. We"ll click on the “Choose Low" action and then we"ll click the Play button at the bottom of the Actions panel. This will begin to run the action.

After loading the actions, they will ap-

pear at the bottom of the Layers panel. Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved4 This particular action needs some input from us, so it will pause when the Gauss- ian Blur dialog becomes visible. Here, we want to move the Radius slider to the lowest possible setting that still makes the undesirable texture disappear. In the example image, we set the Radius slider to 6.8 and then clicked OK. This caused the action to nish running. As a result, we ended up with two image layers (plus the original, background layer). The High Frequency layer contains the detail and the Low Frequency layer contains the version of the picture that we just blurred.

The frequency sepa-

ration action paused when the Gaussian

Blur setting ap-

peared. Here, we are setting the Radius slider to the lowest possible setting that still removes the un- desirable texture.

After the frequency

separation runs, we end up with three layers: The original,

Background layer, the

High Frequency layer,

which contains all the detail (shown) and the Low Frequency layer, which contains the general tone and color. Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved5 The High Frequency layer contains the content that we want to retouch out, so this is the layer we want to work on. If we wanted to work with the brightness or color, we would instead work on the Low Frequency layer.

With the High Frequency layer active, we"ll

use the Spot Healing Brush to paint over part of the skin that has the dirty texture. Before painting, however, there is a setting that we need to focus on. In most retouching scenari- os, we like the “Sample All Layers" check box (in the Options Bar) to remain on. This will allow you to do retouching while working on an empty layer. When it comes to frequency separation, we want the “Sample All Layers" check box to remain OFF. (In some retouch- ing tools, it will be a Sample drop-down menu, from which you will want to choose “Current Layer.") This will make it so that the retouching tool only aects the layer containing the details. We"ll use the Spot Healing Brush to paint over spots with the undesirable texture. Because it"s only working on the details, the color and tone remain smooth. We can even paint across transitions that would dene the shape of something (like the crease of her smile). When using the Spot Healing Brush, it"s best to use a hard-edged brush. That"s because the tool is trying to perfectly match the brightness and the color of whatever is on the edge of where you paint. If you use a soft-edge brush, you"re not letting it have control all the way out to the edge.

The Spot Healing Brush is being used

on the High Frequency layer to remove the undesirable texture. Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved6 After we're done retouching the area, it would be nice to see a before-and-after view of our work. Fortunately, we have the original, Background layer to use for comparison. We"ll hold down the Option key (Alt on Win) and click on the eye- ball icon to the left of the Background layer icon. This will turn o the visibility of all the layers except for the Background layer. We"ll do the same thing (holding down the Option key while clicking on the icon) to turn the other layers back on. In the end, we were able to easily remove the undesirable texture from the girl"s face without negatively aecting the tone or color of her skin. We could go on to atten the image if we are done with the retouch work. In the next example image, we"re going to use frequency separation on a dierent kind of portrait. Here, we want to use the technique to remove some whiskers and minimize the appearance of pores. With the image open, we"ll open the Actions panel and click on the “Frequency Separation: Choose Low" action again. We"ll click the Play button at the bottom of the Actions panel and the action will start to play. It will pause when the Gaussian Blur dialog appears, and here we will use the Radius slider to choose the lowest setting where we can not see the whiskers on the face. We"ll click OK and the action will complete. Upon completion, there will be three layers: The original, Background layer, the High Frequency layer (the one containing the detail) and the Low Frequency layer (the one containing the color and tone). Above, you can see a before (left) and after (right) view of the retouch work. Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved7 With the visibility of both frequency separation layers turned on, we'll make sure that the High Frequency layer is active, as this is the one containing the detail we want to retouch. We"ll make sure that the retouching tools are set to work on the current layer only. This setting can be found in the Options Bar above the main image window when the retouching tool is active. ABOVE: The frequency separation action paused when the Gaussian Blur setting appeared. We are setting the Radius slider to the lowest possible setting that still removes the undesirable whiskers. LEFT: After the fre- quency separation runs, we end up with a high frequency layer, a low frequency layer and the original, background layer. Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved8 In this image, we'll activate the Clone Stamp Tool and we'll use a brush that has a semi-soft edge so that one won"t be able to tell where the edge of the brush was. Whenever you use the Clone Stamp Tool, you need to tell the tool where to copy from. When using the Clone Stamp Tool, we USUALLY need to worry about the color, tone and texture of the sample area, but that"s not the case when using the fre- quency separation technique. Here, the layer we"re working on contains mainly

50% gray and some detail in the form of textures. This makes it so that we don"t

need to worry about the color and brightness of the sample area. We just need to think about texture and detail.

The smooth cheek will be

a good sample area be- cause it contains the tex- ture that we want to exist in the retouch area. With the Clone Stamp Tool, we"ll hold down the Option key (Alt on Win) and click on part of the cheek to sam- ple from that area. Then. we"ll use the tool to paint in the area where we want to remove the whiskers. We"ll continue to sample from areas from smooth skin to remove all of the whiskers. Next, we"ll going to focus on the nose, which has some visible pores that I want to minimize. Using the Clone Stamp Tool, we"ll sample from an area in the cheek, where the pores are not visible and then we"ll paint over the nose area. Remem- ber, the color and brightness don"t matter here, because the tool can only aect the detail/texture. The Clone Stamp Tool is being use to sample from an area in the cheek and then paint over the whiskers beneath the nose. Frequency Separation: Face Retouch © Ben Willmore, All rights reserved9 On occasion, you'll need to use a slightly additional technique because things just won"t look right when you simply use the Clone Stamp Tool. In those instances, you"ll need to change the blending mode of the Clone Stamp Tool, which can be done by using the menu in the Options Bar above the main image window. You will need to set this menu to either the Lighten or Darken blending mode, de- pending on the image. In the video example image, we need to lighten the area in order to make the whiskers go away, so we will need to change the blending mode of the Clone Stamp Tool to Lighten. (If we needed to darken an area in order to remove some texture, then we would instead use the Darken blending mode.)

If you are ever using this technique to

remove texture and you nd that it re- moved a little too much texture, you can use the Fade command. Know that this command will fade the very last thing you did in Photoshop, and nothing else.

Access this feature by clicking on the

Edit menu and choosing Fade.

The Clone Stamp

Tool is being use to

sample from an area in the cheek and then paint over the visible pores on the nose.

The Fade command will lessen the eect of

the very last thing you did in Photoshop.