Retouch images with frequency separation

Ben Secret explains how to achieve smooth yet sharp images, without losing realism

One of the black arts of photographic retouching is how to achieve the impossibly smooth, yet sharply rendered skin, textures and fabrics seen in fashion and beauty images. Photoshop has its own high quality smoothing and sharpening filters, but the two processes tend to be somewhat contradictory.

In this tutorial I’ll walk you through how I retouch an image from start to finish, using a technique that enables you to selectively process not only different areas of an image, but also different detail levels. Frequency separation involves creating a high detail (high spatial frequency) layer and a low detail layer from a source image – a particularly clever method of doing this was popularised by Sean Baker, a Maryland-based photographer and retoucher. Using this technique enables you to smooth and rework rough and fine details independently, and opens up some very high-quality and non-destructive methods with which to sharpen your images.

01 In Photoshop, the first step is to ensure you’re in 16-bit mode and, using your own photo, create two duplicate layers of your source image. Name the middle layer ‘low frequency’ and the top ‘high frequency’. The bottom is your untouched image, which you may want to reference later.

02 Select the low frequency layer. To create your frequency separated image, you need to remove all the detail from this layer. Select Gaussian Blur. The Radius setting determines the crossover point between your high and low detail layers. This should be the point at which very fine details like skin pores and eyelashes blur. Experiment until you’re happy.

03 Now select the high frequency layer, and go to Image>Apply Image. For Layer, select Low frequency from the drop-down menu, and for Blending, select Add (not Linear Dodge Add). Set Scale to 2, Offset to 0, tick the Invert box and hit OK. All being well, you should now have a faint, fine detail layer. Change the Blending Mode to Linear Light.

04 Your original image is now reconstructed with no loss in quality. Select the low frequency layer and apply a surface blur (Filter>Blur). You want enough surface blur to smooth out any inconsistencies in skin tone, without smudging highlights and shadows. I’m using Radius: 11, and Threshold: 10

05 With your high frequency layer neatly separated, smoothing and painting on your image becomes much less destructive. The light here has cast some hard shadows on the girl’s face. Staying on the low frequency layer, use the Eye Dropper and a soft paint brush with Flow set to 1% to smooth the contours of the face.

06 Select the high frequency layer and clean up any blemishes, wrinkles and stray hairs. One of my favourite tools is the Spot Healing Brush. Without the low frequencies, this tool becomes even more effective, enabling you to zap unwanted details without then creating patchy colour inconsistencies.

07 This technique also enables you to apply some very high quality sharpening effects. Duplicate the high frequency layer, add a mask to the new layer, copy and paste the high frequency image into its own mask (Alt/Opt+click the Mask window in the Layers palette), and invert it (Ctrl/Cmd+I)

08 Next create a Dodge and Burn layer to bring out highlights and shadows where you want them. Go to Layer>New> Layer, set the Mode to Overlay, and tick ‘Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray)’. Paint on this layer with a soft black or white brush set to 1% Flow. (The image here demonstrates how this layer looks with the Blending Mode set to Normal.)

09 Dodge and Burn can be used with large brushes to create dramatic highlights and shadows. I created another Dodge and Burn layer for the background, and added some light to the image elements I wanted to bring out, such as the cupcakes. I also created a little more glow from the light, and darkened the shadows around the model.

10 After painting, dodging and burning the skin, it’s not unusual to find small patchy areas and inconsistencies in your brush work. To check for this, create a Curves adjustment layer with a very exaggerated S-curve: small tonal inconsistencies will be blown up for easier correction.

11 Make your exaggerated curves layer invisible and create another Curves adjustment layer to pull the shadows down a bit. Go to the Blue Channel and add some blue in the shadows. When I’m happy with the outcome, I duplicate this layer so I can mix it in further, without having to change anything.

12 Now create another Curves adjustment layer to tweak the colour. For images that need heavy colour correction, this would be one of the first steps in the retouching process. However, here it’s more for a creative effect. Select the Blue Channel and rotate the gradient clockwise by about 10 degrees.

13 Next add a Hue/Saturation layer and a Brightness/Contrast layer, just to balance the image at this stage. Take the Saturation down to -27. When desaturating an image, I set the Blending Mode of the Adjustment layer to Color so that I don’t lose any contrast.

14 To add shine and specularity to the highlights, create a new layer and, with white selected as your foreground colour, go to Select>Color Range. Take the Fuzziness up to a point where you can see only the brightest highlights, hit OK, and then fill the selected area with white.

15 For this image I wanted a softer, dream-like quality. The white areas you just filled might be quite grainy, so with this layer selected, add a Gaussian Blur with a Radius of about 5 pixels. This will smooth the white highlights on the skin and add a subtle glow.

16 I also wanted to add some depth to the darker areas of the image, to make sure the focus is on the model and the cupcakes. To do this, simply do the same thing again on a new layer, this time with black selected as your foreground colour, and fill the area in black. Mix this in at a low Opacity, somewhere around 10-20%.

17 Take a look at the image now: one thing dragging the eye away from the model’s face and towards the centre is the dark cupcake on the sink. To correct this, I created a new layer, set the Clone Stamp tool to Sample: All Layers in the Tool Options bar, and replaced the dark cupcake with the yellow one next to it.

18 When retouching, some creatives like to liquify an image as the first step but I prefer to leave it until last as this is more of a destructive edit. I’ll usually save the image as a Photoshop file, then flatten it for this step. Here I made the nose straighter and reduced the stretch from the earring on the earlobe.

How To Enhance & Retouch An Image – Photoshop Tutorial

Sometimes we have a precious moment in our lives captured in the wrong way. This is where Photoshop is used to fix this problem — to enhance and retouch our precious, yet less-than-perfect image to become precious perfect ones.

In this tutorial, I will share some of my favourite enhancing and retouching techniques. You may know some of my techniques, and others, you may not. So, let’s get started.

Step 1

Open the Cosplay Girl image. Special thanks to Priestess Shizuka for her permission to use this image. You can find the image here. Crop it (Ctrl + C) to get rid of those black edges at the top and bottom.

Step 2

Notice that the image isn’t smooth enough, especially the hair, so I want to make it smoother by increasing the amount of the pixels. Choose Image > Image size, or hit Alt + Ctrl + I on the keyboard. In the resolution column, change the value to 200 pixels/inch or more. And then click OK.

Step 3

Now I want to level it, to make this image better. As you can see when we open the histogram (Window > Histogram), the histogram tells us that this image suffered an ‘unbalance’ tonal range. The gap at the light area (right side) means the highlight areas are not as bright as they could be. Thats why the image looks rather dull.

It will be good if we can trace the brightest, darkest and midtone pixels of this image to apply proper level adjustment on it. This is so Photoshop can convert the brightest pixels in this image to become pure bright (pure white), darkest pixels to be pure dark, and the midtones as well, for ideal tonal distribution.

To do that, duplicate the background layer by hitting Ctrl + J. Create a new layer under it by hitting Ctrl + Shift + N, and then, fill it with white color (Ctrl + Backspace).

Step 4

Target layer 1, and double click it to bring up the Layer Style dialog box. On the Blending Optionswindow, drag the white triangle to the left, until it almost meets the black triangle on the left post. The remaining spot is the darkest pixel in this image.

Step 5

Take the Color Sampler tool, change the Sample Size to 3 by 3 Average, then point it to one of those remaining spots in this image. We’ve got sample 1 here — the darkest pixels.

Step 6

Repeat step 4, but this time in the Layer Style window, do the opposite by dragging the black triangle to the right.

Again with the Color Sampler tool, point it to the one of those remaining spots. We’ve got sample 2: the lightest pixels.

Step 7

This time we want to trace the midtones. Repeat step 4, and in the Layer Style window drag the black and white triangles to the center, around 127.5 (= 255/2). However, when we drag it close to 127.5, the spot sample becomes too narrow, with a focus on the girl only, not the background, thus we should drag the black triangle to 121, and the white triangle to 134 (6.5 units either way of 127.5).

That will be the ‘equal’ value for both of them. Then, with the Sampler Color tool, take a sample from one of those remaining spots. Here we’ve got Sample 3: the midtones.

Step 8

Now target Layer 1, double click it to bring up the Layer Style dialog box, and then reset those triangles to the original post. Now, with the Sampler tool still active, you should indications as shown below:

You can use actual pixel mode when tracing those spots, to get more accurate results, but in this case, I think what we did before is enough.

Step 9

Now, create a Levels Adjustments layer above layer 1. On the Levels Adjustments window, use the eyedropper to set the black point. Click on the eyedropper, at black, then on Sample 1 that we made previously.

Step 10

For the midtones, click the eyedropper for gray point, point and click it to Sample 3. And last, click the eyedropper for white point, then point and click Sample 2.

Now, what we’ve got here is an image with an ‘ideal’ tonal and color range. We’ve got pure black, pure white and the tonal spans mathematically ideal. With a quick visual check, you can see that the image is indeed getting better. That’s the best I can achieve for this image so far.

Step 11

Now let’s add some details and emphasize some parts of the image. Of course, Photoshop can’t create any details, but it can reveal or enhance it. First, hit Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to merge the layers without flattening all layers beneath it. Target this new layer, then go to Image > Calculations. This will bring us to the Calculations dialog box.

Step 12

After taking a closer look at each channel, you will see that the green channel contains the most details, so we’re going to use that channel as a ‘patch’. We’re going to multiply it to get a more significant result. In the Calculations dialog box, set the value as shown below.

Step 13

The result will be located at the bottom of the Channels palette, name it ‘Alpha 1′. Click it, select all (Ctrl + A), copy (Ctrl + C), and then go back to the Layers Palette and paste it (Ctrl + V) on top of all the layers. Then set the Blending Mode to Soft light. Name it ‘Basic’.

Step 14

The dark details distribute nicely, but there seems to be too much light. Let’s decrease it a little. Double click the Basic Layer to bring up the Layer Style dialog box, then while holding the Altkey, move the white triangle to the left; it will separate the triangles to give us a smooth transition.

Step 15

On step 13, we may have lost some details on her clothes; so let’s fix that. To do that, add a layer mask for this Layer (Basic Layer), and brush that area with the soft black brush, to get back some detail from the underlying layer. I use a Soft Round Brush with size 50 px, Hardness 0%, andOpacity 20%. Make sure you target the Layer Mask Thumbnail on the Layers Pallete before brushing.

Step 16

Now let’s smooth out the skin especially the right shoulder. To do that, hit Ctrl + Shift + Alt+ E again and apply the median filter. Choose Filter > Noise > Median. Set the radius to 10 pixels. Again, apply a layer mask to this layer, Hide All by holding the Alt key when you click theAdd Layer Mask button. Use a white smooth brush to cover the rough areas, but leave the hair and edges. Name this layer ‘Smooth Skin’.

Step 17

Now let’s sharpen the image. Like before, hit Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E, and name it ‘Sharpen’. Copy this new layer by hitting Ctrl + J. Hide the copy by clicking the eye icon on the Layers Palette. And then target the original Sharpen layer, go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Set the radiusto 2 pixels, and change the Blending Mode to Vivid Light.

We can see now, how the details become more vivid in this image. However, the hair has also ‘sharpened’ and looks rough, which is not wanted, so, let’s add a layer mask again, reveal only some parts: eyes, nose, lips and clothes using a smooth soft brush.

Step 18

Now target the Sharpen Copy layer that we’ve made before. Make it visible. Name it ‘Smooth Hair’, because this time I want to smooth out the hair using this layer. Go to Filter > Stylize > Diffuse. Select Anisotropic, and then click OK. Add a Layer Mask, and hide all areas except the hair. Zoom in to see the result.

Step 19

Finally, create the Hue/Saturation adjustments layer on top. Set the Saturation value to 20 to give this image more color. You can compare this final result with the original image, by simply holding the Alt key, and clicking on the eye icon of the original layer image.

Final Result

And walla, here’s our final image! You can download the PSD here.

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