Touching up Portraits

Here is a little tip for touching up portraits in Photoshop called Frequency Separation.  Frequency separation works because it allows you to separate the texture of an image from the color and the tone.  When retouching you can focus on just the texture or the skin just beneath it.

Before

After

Step 1.   Creating Copies

In Photoshop, create two copies from the base image.  Name the first copy "Low Freq Blur" and the second copy "High Freq Texture".  Toggle the "High Freq Texture" layer visibility to off.  Group the two layers into a folder and rename it Frequency Separation.

Creating copies

Step 2.   Adding Gaussian Blur

Select the "Low Freq Blur" layer.  Then go to to Filter, Blur and select Gaussian Blur.  Add enough blur to the image that the texture disappears but not enough that everything blends together.  The amount depends on the photo but 4 to 8 is a good estimate.

Step 3.  Apply the Image

For the next step, toggle "High Freq Separation" layer to on.  Then select the High layer and go to Image and then Apply Image.In the layer selection choose the "Low" layer.  For the blending selection choose Subtract.  Add the value 2 for Scale and 128 for Offset.

Once you select the values, the image will turn gray with some faint details.  The faint details are the details blurred out from the "Low" layer.  Change the layer blending mode to Linear Light to finish the step.

Applying the image

Step 4. Remove Blotches

The next step is to remove the uneven colors of the skin.  Select the "Low" layer.  Use the lasso tool and select an area of uneven skin tone.  Change the feather to around 30px to make the transition smoother.  Once you made the selection, add more Gaussian Blur to it.  Set the blur radius to a point to where the skin tone blends well.  Repeat this for all areas where you think there is uneven skin tone.

You can also clone out areas where there are different colors on the skin, such as pimples or a dark scar.  Once you cloned it out, select the general area of the imperfection and then apply Gaussian blur to even it out.  In this step of Frequency Separation you are only dealing with the skin color or tone and not the details.

Step 5.  Edit Textures

For step 5, select "High" layer.  Select the Cloning Tool and change the Sample Layer to Current Layer.  Clone out the imperfections such as scars and pimple.  When you clone out things on this layer you are only cloning out the texture and not the color, so you can sample from an area with different color and apply it to another.

The last thing you will want to do is adjust the opacity of the group.  You can apply as much or as little of this effect to your overall image.  Set the opacity to what you think works well.  That is Frequency Separation.

Fall Photography Tips

Fall around Washington has stunning vistas with red and gold hues of the leaves changing color.  Here a few tips that you might want to try when capturing images during this time of year.

Gold Creek Pond

Fall Colors

1. Sunlight behind the leaves of trees look great.  It makes the trees look like they are glowing.  This can be done at anytime of the day but when the sun is just coming up or going down you will get light that is not as harsh.

2.  Try using a polarizer for two reasons.  1, it helps reduce the glare of the sun on the leaves.  Just put on the polarizer and turn it one way or the other until the glare is reduced.  2, it helps the colors pop a little bit more.

3.  Fall color is a great time to put on a long lend and creative shoot tight.  There are so many great looking things with fall photography that you might miss with a wide angle lens.  Shoot tighter.  Use a wider aperture for some depth of field.  Capture backlit trees even closer.

Gold Creek Pond

4.  Cloudy days work really well for photographing the fall colors too.  Everything tends to be more flat and evenly lit on a cloudy day or overcast days.  So colors in the leaves stand out even more.  Plus, if you are shooting anything with moving water, those cloudy days help you get a slower shutter speed to make the water smooth.

5.  If you are shooting in tighter and closer on trees on a windy day, then do not forget to raise your ISO.  Generally you do not want to see movement in the leaves, but on a windy day you might.  Just raise the ISO and shutter speed until the leaves are sharp.  Look at your LCD and when the leaves are not blurry anymore, your ISO is at the right spot.

Snoqualmie Falls

Leavenworth

RAW vs JPEG

As you learn to capture images one of the basic questions you may have is what is the best way to capture an image, RAW or JPEG.  If you are trying to get the best out of your image it's important to understand what shooting RAW has to offer.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with shooting JPEG, they are mostly what we see as photographs.  When you shoot JPEG a lot of information is thrown out when creating the file from the original data that is captured by your camera's sensor.  This makes it practically impossible to recover data that may be lost.

If you retain the RAW file, then the key elements and data are retained for you to process your images with software such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop.  An example of why this is good is with a RAW image you can recover details from shadows, which can not be done with a JPEG file.  Another example, when an image is captured in RAW the white balance setting is embedded in the file but you retain the ability to change that with your software, with JPEG you can not.

Pros and Cons

RAW
Pro
Retains full image quality
You control which image data is kept from the surplus available
Better processing on the computer than in-camera
Can often recover exposure loss in the shadows and highlights
Impossible to overwrite by mistake

Con
Large files need more storage space
Not an image file, requires special software to view
Saving large files in-camera may slow down shooting
Processing on computer takes time

JPEG
Pro
Less storage space
Immediately available (printing, uploading, etc)
If perfectly exposed, as good as a processed RAW file

Con
All other image data is discarded
Has some slight image artifacts
No processing headroom means no way of recovering lost data
Not possible to change you mind about settings such as white balance

Whats in a name?

RAW is not an acronym, it means raw as in unprocessed.  It is a file format for storing information captured by the camera's sensor.  Each camera manufacturer has its own way of achieving this, which is why the file suffix is different for each camera.  Nikon uses .NEF, which stands for Nikon Electronic Format.  Canon uses either .CRW or .CR2, which stands for Canon RAW or Canon RAW 2.

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Expert Group, it is the most common file format for photographs and was designed to transmit images by keeping the file small.  It does this by compressing the information