Frequency selection help

[shizam1]

Ok, I had some real problems with the photo below. I couldn't find a frequency that worked well for me. Usually I blur the image until the color is smooth and not showing details... which ended up being a radius of 20 or more for the cheek on the left side.

My main problem with frequency separation, is if you have a really dark or light spot, then after frequency separation, the color layer will have a dark or light spot, and trying to fix the blemish in the detail portion of the photo will just lead to a dark or light mess.

And sometimes, using the heal tool on the detail layer will create weird artifacts... like blue colors, blad smudges, etc that I can't figure out.

On the photo below I ended up doing my D&B first, then going back and doing some frequency work, but using the clone stamp instead of healing tool.

Any suggestions?


Retouched:
http://flickr.com/gp/shizam1/T41j30

Original:
http://flickr.com/gp/shizam1/oy2Quc

[mistermonday]

On most images, Frequency Separation is not meant to be done at a single radius because the anomalies occur in different frequency ranges. Most of the time you can get by with two or three.
Regards, Murray

[shizam1]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

On most images, Frequency Separation is not meant to be done at a single radius because the anomalies occur in different frequency ranges. Most of the time you can get by with two or three.
Regards, Murray

Thanks for the info.

So how would you tackle the large pores on the lit cheek on the left side of the image? If using frequency separation, what frequency for that area?

[mistermonday]

This process using the spot healing brush on the high freq layer seems to work really well on those large pores. Or you could D&B the conventional way which will take a lot longer - or a combination of both.
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...-burn-cs5.html
Regards, Murray

[shizam1]

Thanks for that, I will be playing around with it tonight!