Action: Frequency Separation - High Pass

[Tida]

Please find attached an action for Frequency Separation which is based on a High Pass Layer predicting the Frequency.

There are several advantages compared to other techniques:

• (A) You do not have to decide on a blurred image whether you have found the correct strength of separation. Much better, you can see desired structure at the grey image of a typical high pass in the preview dialog. For that, you just have to put the preview dialog to 100%.
  (B) Useful for 8,16 and 32bit as well as Placeholder images
  (C) It saves resources as it is completely based on virtual copies
  (D) Process of retouching is completely reversible and non-destructive
  (E) The retouching process is very fast with almost no delay on your computer

Please activate "Find" in the layer box and type "Retouch" to just see the layers where you have to carry out adjustments:

• 0) Frequency Separation - Retouch: Switch on/off to compare with the original
  1) Radiate Eye - Retouch: Useful to increase micro contrast of eyes, lips and hair. Use Airbrush with Intensity (10-20%); Select white or grey color (since V02)
  2) Texture - Retouch: Use Healing Brush with Intensity (100%), Source (Active Below), sample texture with Alt+Mouse Click; delete by Eraser
  3) Frequency - Retouch: Change it, if you want to adjust strength of separation; don't paint on it's mask
  4) Tone - Retouch: Use Airbrush with Intensity (5-20%); sample tone with Alt+Mouse Click; delete by Eraser
  5) Tone Blur - Retouch: Use Airbush with Intensity (10-20%); select white or grey color. (since V02)
  6) Healing- Retouch: Use Healing Brush with Intensity (100%), Source (Active Below), sample texture with Alt+Mouse Click; delete by Eraser (since V03)

Additional Tricks:

• (A) HF Layer, disable Draw Isolated in layer Attributes to see grey high frequency image.
  (B) HF Layer, increase opacity of layer above 100% to sharpen overall image
  (C) LF Layer, decrease opacity of layer below 100% to sharpen overall image
  (D) Radiate Eye - Retouch, Flood Fill with dark grey to sharpen whole image (since V02)
  (E) Texture - Retouch, use 50% Grey Airbrush to blur white area of eye and get rid of fine red vines
  (F) Tone Blur - Retouch, When your image contains large area of skin, Flood Fill with White and start to Airbrush with black untouched areas. (since V02)
  (G) Tone Blur - Retouch, also try to play with Color Filter, shift Background Grey that shadows come into view again (since V02)
  (H) Remember your base Size of Frequency layer, Lower its Size value and carry out Texture Retouch with 100% Healing Brush, This will give you finer texture without blurring, go back to base Size of Frequency.
  (I) Texture - Retouch, don't use Healing Brush <100% this will only give more blurring and you loose detail, instead try as described in (H)
  (J) Use Tone Blur - layer then Healing Retouch for strong dermal impurities. (since V03)

Notes about Retouching:
If you want to learn retouching by frequency separation, please study all the tutorials published in the internet. If they are done with Photoshop it should be easy to translate them for Photoline after some time. I have not found any procedure on Photoshop which gives you the freedom of being completely reversible as you can do it here with Photoline.

Frequency Separation - High Pass V02.actions

Frequency Separation - High Pass V03.actions

Note: It is not the typical passway which you sometimes find described in the internet for using high pass filters. In this case it should be the mathematically correct way as it needs to have reduced contrast to make it workable. All is based on the effect that inverse High Pass Layer with lowered contrast by 25%/75% Curve Layer and blended with Linear Light is the same as Gausian Blur

[Herbert123]

Many thanks!

Btw, you may want to include your explanation how to use these layers in the description field of the action.

[Tida]

Please find below extended Version. This time description of use is included.
Now you will find two additional layers:

• Radiate Eye - Retouch
  Tone Blur - Retouch

By the way, would be great if text information box could be activated for scrolling.

Aktion_FreqSepV2.jpg

Frequency Separation - High Pass V02.actions

[Tida]

Not only you can make your face much younger.

To achieve aging effect:
Do your retouch only with Tone Blur - Retouch and Texture - Retouch. Afterwards, put opacity of these layers to negative.

[Tida]

Below you will find a test sheet of typical skin texture which was retouched by different frequencies. Sample area for each patch was kept the same.

The numbers display the High Pass Size of the Frequency - Retouch Layer.
On the right side you will see the Texture - Retouch layers which you would achieve without any blending.
On the left side you will see the Texture - Retouch layers blended (linear light) by the action when the High Pass Size of Frequency was finally set to 30.

One idea of application could be that you use such kind of skin texture sheet temporary in your image to repair areas with lost texture. To fit the textures to your final image you adjust the required detail just by changing High Pass Size of the Frequency - Retouch Layer.
Copy position of Healing Brush goes onto the skin texture sheet and the brush onto skin area of your final image.

[Tida]

Please find in the first thread download for Version 3 with the extension of Healing-Retouch Layer. This has the advantage that in combination with Tone Blur - layer retouching is more easy at areas of stong dermal impurities.

Please activate "Find" in the layer box and type "Retouch" to just see the layers where you have to carry out adjustments:

• ......
  6) Healing- Retouch: Use Healing Brush with Intensity (100%), Source (Active Below), sample texture with Alt+Mouse Click; delete by Eraser (since V03)

Retouch Layers V03.jpg

Below you can see an example (100% crop). I sampled same area for (c) and (d) with the healing brush to see the difference:
(a) original
(b) after retouching with Tone Blur - Retouch Layer
(c) after (b) and use of Texture - Retouch
(d) after (b) and use of Healing - Retouch

You should see that (d) looks better than (c)

Dermal Retouch.jpg