I’d like to preface this entire article by saying… portrait retouching is by NO means necessary. All faces are beautiful, and “imperfections” of the skin should be celebrated. With that being said, if you’re intrigued by the idea of portrait editing, it’s an incredibly enjoyable experience. Often in advertising and professional publications, photos are retouched to display a crisper and more polished final image. Frequency separation is one of my favourite techniques to accomplish this.
In this article and corresponding video tutorial, we’ll be removing unwanted blemishes (without loosing the texture of natural skin) and unifying the colour of our model’s face. Feel free to follow along by downloading a copy of the image I’ll be using to demonstrate this method of retouching.