Project two: Retouching
Mike Harris shows you how to use frequency separation to retouch a portrait in Adobe CC
One of the biggest challenges when you shoot a portrait is to capture your subject’s skin tone as evenly as possible. The best way to do this is to avoid direct light, which causes harsh shadows and bright hotspots. But there are many other reasons why a subject’s skin tone might not be consistent. We photographed our model Jessica (Instagram: @connor_and_jessica) at a botanical garden, on a bracing autumn’s day. Cold weather causes skin to flush; and light, reflected off of foliage, causes green colour casts. Thankfully, there’s a clever way to fix these problems in post-production: frequency separation.
This technique is so-called because it splits an image’s high and low frequencies – essentially, texture and colour – into separate layers. This means you can even out tones without actually removing the details and character of a person’s skin. We used Photoshop CC to showcase this technique, but you can apply the principles in other layerbased editing applications, such as Affinity Photo.
Face the facts
Naturally, most of your efforts will be spent retouching your subject’s face, but don’t neglect other areas of skin that might be showing, such as their neck or hands. Even a tiny sliver of wrist or ankle will stand out if the skin tone doesn’t match that of the face. Fortunately, the same frequency separation techniques still apply.
1 Time for my close-up
Frequency separation isn’t a fiveminute job, so save your best retouching efforts for when it’s going to have the maximum impact on your image. If you’ve captured a full-length or 3/4-length portrait, you can spend less time retouching, because the tiny details simply won’t be visible to the viewer.
However, if you’re shooting a close-up portrait, like we were (with the new Nikon Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena), then taking the time to carefully retouch the skin tones will have a huge impact on the final result.
2 Bad lighting
When you shoot outdoor portraits, it’s much easier to operate on an overcast day, when the sunlight is diffused. On a sunny day, direct sunlight is best avoided because it can cast harsh shadows and bright hotspots on your subject’s face. Instead, backlight your subject and bounce soft light back onto their face using a reflector, or find a shady spot where the light is naturally diffused. Rather than trying to fix a poorly lit portrait, you’ll have much more success retouching an image that’s already well lit, providing you with a good base to work from.
3 Patch work
Once you’ve made your base edits in Lightroom or Camera Raw, open the image in Photoshop. Duplicate the ‘Background’ layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J).
