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Lesson Info

Frequency Separation to Remove Staining and Blemishes

I want to come in here and get rid of the whiskers that you find here or on this image. She's got stuff around her mouth. I want to get rid of that without getting rid of the shading that's on her face or hear. Do you see the stain on her outfit? I want to remove it. Well, I'm going to do that through a process that's called frequency separation. Frequency separation is a way to divide your picture in the two parts. In those two parts are the fine little bitty details and then the big overall tonality and color of the image. And if we can separate those two, then the texture that is in her outfit, it's known as the heather that's here could be on its separate layer from the overall color in tonality. And therefore I'm going to be able to more easily get rid of this stain without interrupting that texture. Then we're gonna do that using an action. This action comes with a class if you purchase the class and let's load it when you download the files for this class. One of the files is ca...

lled Ben's Frequency Separation, and it ends with letters a t N. That means action. If I double click on that file, either here in bridge or in your operating system, Photoshopped will likely come to the front. If it did, you successive successfully loaded that action, there's gonna be no screen that says, Congratulations. You did that. So a lot of people end up thinking it didn't load, and they go try it again and again and again. And every time they try, they successfully load it. And so they get, like, nine copies of it loaded in order to actually see it go to the window menu. And there's a choice in here called Actions. And in there you will find at the bottom bends frequency separation. It's a little folder. You can expand and collapse, and there are two versions of inaction. I'm gonna choose the one called Choose Low, and I'm gonna hit the play button when I hit play. It's going to bring up the Gazi and Blur window, and I could move my mouse onto my picture and click in an important area so I can view just that spot when you're in Gazi and Blur. If you click within this preview you see before if you let go, you see after in what I want to do here is I'm gonna bring up this radius setting until the fine detail goes away. That means the texture of her outfit where that natural variation known as the heather of her outfit So I can no longer see that. But I can still see the overall color and tonality. So right there all the detail from that Heather has gone away. I don't I can't see it, but I can still see what color things are. I can still see how bright they are and everything like that. So I'm gonna click. OK, now, if you look at the resulting layers I end up with in my layers panel I have three layers. The bottom most layer is just the original picture. You're welcome to throw it away. You don't have to have it, but I find it useful to be there so I can compare my results to the original by just hiding the layers that are found above. But for now, I'll turn off that eyeball just to let you know it's not truly needed. Then we have two layers. One is called high frequency. The other is called low frequency. Let's take a look at what's in them. Well, the middle layer, if I were to hide the top one is the blurry version of the picture, the same version we saw when we were in the Blur filter. The information that we blurred away from this layer didn't just get thrown away. It got moved to the layer that is above the layer that's called high frequency. But all that layer contains is fine detail. It does not contain the overall color atonality, so it's not something you're used to looking at. But let's go take a peek. I'll hide the middle layer and then I'll turn on the top layer. That is all the fine detail. And if you look at this, isn't that the texture of her outfit? And it does not have the overall tone ality, meaning the overall brightness of the picture or the overall color. I can't really see the stain in there. Instead, I only see this stain in the layer that's underneath. So what if I were to grab the paint brush tool and I will use a soft edge brush, and I just copy this color right here. When you're in the paint brush tool, you can grab a color out of your image by option clicking. That's all clicking and windows. And then I can just paint like this. Well, is not making the stain disappear from here? Well, I'm gonna choose, Undo, and let's do that while the other layer is turned on so you can see it in real time. Now I'm getting rid of this stain, but I'm maintaining the fine little details that were there. And that's what frequency separation allows you to dio. Now, for areas down here, I might need to be a little bit careful when I get into these dark areas. It all depends How much of it is contained in the high frequency? Let's see No doing. All right. Do you see this? Like this shadow right here, The kind of dark area. If I paint over that, it might reduce a little bit of shading. So I would just choose one tone that's in there in paint in the shady area. But most of it, I could just come over here and grab from here painted away. Um I grabbed from over here. Just get rid of that stain over there. It messed up a little bit. So all that means is I need a sample from an area that's over there because this is the They're brighter or darker, something else, and then I can painted it. So look at her. Let's show you before and after all, turn on that bottom most layer, which is the original picture. We'll just hide these two layers and turn it back on. That's what frequency separation allows you to dio. So let's apply this to a few other images here. This guy has got some whiskers, and I really wish he didn't. But if I go in there and just try to retouch out the whiskers, the problem is the little shading that's here that defines the edge of his lip and defines this little kind of indented area here is going to go away and I want to retain it. So I'm gonna go to my actions panel. I'm gonna choose frequency separation and I can choose Choose low again. Quick play. I get the blur screen again. Remember, you can click on your image to determine what area you're looking at and what I want to do here is adjust the radius intel. The whiskers go away. I'm trying to find the lowest setting that makes all the whiskers disappear, because whatever it is I blur away from this layer is going to be transferred to the layer above. I don't want to go to high, though, because otherwise if I go way too high, then that indent that was there that is just a natural part of the skin, it's also gone. That means it's also going to be on that other layer. Whatever you blur away gets moved to the other layer. Not just looking for whiskers to go away right about there. The whiskers are gone. I click. OK, and now we have our three layers. Let's go take a look at him. Here's the top, most layered. You see the whiskers heres the middle layer, No whiskers. So this time I'm gonna be working on that top most layer because that's where it contains what I want to get rid off. And all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find an area of appropriate texture, and I think this area over here would work. Fine. I'm gonna go to my clone stamp tool, and I'm gonna copy from that area. You got to be careful. Any time you use things like Clone Stamp, this is the one time when you don't want to use the setting that I normally use up here for sample. You want this to set to current layer and therefore, the Onley thing it can copy from is the contents of the layer that's active. That layer looks like this. If, on the other hand, it's set to current and below, it's gonna copy from what this picture looks like as a whole. And it's gonna apply it up top where we only have fine detail. It's gonna mess things up. So anyway, said that current layer. Now let's come in here and see if we're able to just come in here and retouch out our whiskers. I Sometimes we'll have to option click again to get a clean area to copy from option click. So I don't run into an ear or something by painting too far and notice that it still has that little darker, redder part that would be a slight in debt in the skin over here, I might copy from what's above more of an out of focus area, so might look more appropriate. There doesn't matter what color it is. Doesn't matter how brighter dark it is. It just matters that it has the right texture. Because if you look at what we're actually applying things, too, it's the top most layer. And if I turn off everything else, look at what's in there. All it is is texture. This is all your copying and working with. So it doesn't have to be the right brightness, because how much does the brightness of this change almost not at all? You're just looking for the texture, cause that's all that's on this layer. And so that's all we're copying from. You don't have to worry about how brighter dark it iss once you turn the layer on that's below. That's when you see the final result. And so we have the fine detail on the top layer, and we have the overall tonality and color on the layer below. The same thing could be used if you wanted to. You retouch out the stuff around hers. It's no different than the whiskers just blur it until that stuff disappears. Now there is two versions or there are two versions off that action. In most the time I used the one we've been using, which is choose low. I want to show you what choose high does. You know how when we use, choose low and we hit play. What I was seen was I was previewing the layer that would be the blurry layer. The one that has all the color information is blurry. Uh, if on the other hand, I want to preview the top layer this layer, then I choose the other version of the action. So I'll just say it looks like I'll choose. Choose high click I. And now I'm previewing the high frequency. I'm seeing the fine details after they've been moved. So here, if I was attempting to get rid of this stuff, I could move this all the way down, and then I'd see nothing. And then I slowly bring this up and I want to just bring that detail in here. But not the overall tone ality for been this too high. I'm going to see the shape of the skin like the three dimensional quality the skin. I want to keep that on the layers below. So maybe right around here, I can still looks like a flat kind of tone. But I could see the fine detail, so there's just two versions of the action. It's a personal preference, which one you prefer to think about. But then, if it's fine detail, you're trying to, um, get rid off. You want to work on the layer that looks like it's full of grace stuff, and you can come in here and just retouch stuff out. And if there's still a little issue there with color, go to the other layer. That's where it's contained. And there I might use just the paint brush tool books. Make sure when you're using any tool in this case, I try to copy a, um, a color. Then, if you're gonna copy of color from your image, go to the eyedropper tool and make sure it's not set to sample all the layers. This is when you want it to be current layer and therefore it copies from the layer you're working on, not incorporating them both because then I'd be able to copy and put that in so advanced retouching. There's so much we could do. We do a month on advanced retouching. I just trying to give you enough techniques to get it So you don't stay at the basic level with the retouching essentials lesson. I tried to give you a better sense for how to think about the main retouching tools, whereas here I should you know how to push it to another level to try to tackle much more complex in difficult retouching jobs.