I've seen a good handful of techniques for airbrushing skin in Photoshop, usually using Gaussian Blur or Surface Blur and a clipping mask. Some even use a blend of toning layers to even out skin tone, but usually that gave the whole image a peachy tone, which didn't create such a bad photo mood, but yesterday I found out about using frequency separation for photo retouching and ever since then those other methods can't even compete with ease and effectiveness.
Frequency separation essentially separates the tone and color from the texture of the object in the photo. This way color corrections and texture correction is looked at independently. So if a spot needs some color correction it can be fixed without ruining the texture above it. The opposite works as well, if there is texture that needs correcting, it can be fixed without having to change the color. Absolutely brilliant!
Here's an old photo of myself that I used as guinea pig. Since it was my first time using frequency separation I may have gone a bit overboard with smoothing out the texture, but overall it still looks much more natural than the other techniques I've seen.
Before
After using frequency separation and playing with the color balance.
This version has minimal texture editing - so it's not overly smooth- and color balance with left alone.
I've been switching off between learning about landscape editing and portrait editing. I'm not sure which one I prefer, they are both a lot of fun. I am giving a break to all that crazy photo manipulation. Puppet warp will be there when I'm ready to go down that road again.
Frequency separation essentially separates the tone and color from the texture of the object in the photo. This way color corrections and texture correction is looked at independently. So if a spot needs some color correction it can be fixed without ruining the texture above it. The opposite works as well, if there is texture that needs correcting, it can be fixed without having to change the color. Absolutely brilliant!
Here's an old photo of myself that I used as guinea pig. Since it was my first time using frequency separation I may have gone a bit overboard with smoothing out the texture, but overall it still looks much more natural than the other techniques I've seen.
Before
I've been switching off between learning about landscape editing and portrait editing. I'm not sure which one I prefer, they are both a lot of fun. I am giving a break to all that crazy photo manipulation. Puppet warp will be there when I'm ready to go down that road again.
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