The basic steps to great retouching using frequency separation

Today we're diving into frequency separation. Say what? 

Frequency separation is a method that can be used to separate colours and tones from its texture and is often used for skin retouching. In other words, with frequency separation you can split the tones and colours of a photograph from its more detailed textures. 

When you're retouching with, for instance the healing brush, you don't have much control over the combination of the colours and the texture. By splitting those two you can work separately on colour/tone issues and texture issues (blemishes and skin problems for example). 

Let's start with this image: 

1. Create a copy of the background layer (CTRL or CMD J) and rename it to Colour.
2. Active the Colour layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur. Set the Gaussian blur in such a way that one can no longer see the fine details in the picture, but still recognize the picture overall.
                   
3. Make a new copy of your background layer and rename it to Texture
4. Activate the Texture layer and go to Image > Apply image.
5. Set the layer to the colour layer, blending on "Subtract" and set Scale:2, Offset:128. 
   
   
   
6. Change the blending mode of the layer to Lineair light. When you just activate the Texture layer this is what it looks like
   

Now we can start retouching the image.

1. Select the colour texture. Select the area - using the lasso tool - that you want to retouch (color and tones differences). Feather your selection 
    
   Its imporant that it blends in well, Check it by hitting Q. Now you can see if the blending is smooth. 
   
   
    
   After you've selected the area, you've got to add Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur). Choose a radius high enough to blend the tones together.
2. Repeat this process for the different areas of the portrait to smoothen the skin tones. (use CTRL/CMD D to deactivate the previous selection).
   Try different amount of blur to get a beter result
3. Activate the Texture layer
4. Repair skin problems and blemished with the clone stamp tool.

And after having followed these basic steps, this is the result: 

There's heaps of information on the web about this subject. Phlearn has a very good tutorial and the guy from Fstoppers has a great article about it. And like I always say: the best thing is to try it yourself (over and over and over again). 

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