RedRoom Photography

Posts: 14

Jacksonville, Florida, US

Ok I tried Frequency Separation Technique. Did I do a good job? If not what am I doing wrong?

Before: … Pierce.jpg

After: … Pierce.jpg

Jun 21 12 04:57 pm Link


Stephanie M Retoucher

Posts: 276

Portland, Maine, US

It looks better than the blur, but there's something still off about it. Her skin almost looks a little chalky/white in areas. The natural shadows appear to have been removed which makes her face look less dimensional than before. Also her hair appears to be darker, which is confusing unless you purposely retouched it to look that way.

The thing about the frequency separation technique, and really any good retouching, is that if you put garbage in you'll get garbage out. That particular image isn't very strong to begin with so I don't think you'll find yourself ever getting the sort of result that really looks high end no matter what the technique.

Jun 21 12 06:29 pm Link



Posts: 60

New York, New York, US

Like Stephanie Mac said, you don't want to remove shadows. Shadows aren't a bad thing, they're what make things look lifelike and three-dimensional instead of flat and fake. In fact, a lot of the time shadows are added to give more dimension to bodies.

With FS, you want to work on removing blemishes with the healing brush and clone stamp. Not every inch of skin and not every single speck, but ones that detract from the rest of the image. You got some of them in your try, but also created others in the process by trying to lighten areas that didn't need to be - such as under her lip, her temple, and on her cheeks. Go easy on it. You don't need to do extensive dodge and burn at this stage or on this image, and you shouldn't be using the actual dodge and burn tools if you didn't already know that.

Try again, practice makes perfect.

Jun 23 12 03:54 pm Link



Posts: 100

New York, New York, US

Umm... I don't wanna be mean, but Frequency separated or not, the image doesn't really look like you retouched it. FS is a tool that allows for a lot of really great retouching techniques, ... it doesn't seem like you really did much after separating the frequencies. Granted, i cant see the images back to back since they are separate links but, the skin needs a lot of work. It's still super blotchy and has a lot of unwanted texture there. This image needs a lot of retouching work and if you want to go the FS route, you'll still need to do a lot of retouching. I suggest googling a FS tutorial, they explain what you can do with the method.

Jul 25 12 01:33 pm Link