Unusual use of frequency separation

[juliewood]

I wanted to give my thanks to everyone who has explained frequency separations and shared their actions. I just came up with an unusual use for one I thought I would share.

I broke one of my cardinal rules and converted an image to b&w before retouching it. So of course, the client wanted it "with the color back in after all." She already has the b&w so if I tried to clean up all the stray hairs etc on the original color version there would be differences in the two prints. I thought I should be able to just put the color back over the retouch somehow.

Using the original as a layer set to color blend mode didn't work, it was very washed-out in the midtones and didn't look at all realistic. So I ran a frequency separation on both the original and the retouched b&w and layered the high freq layer from the b&w on top of the low freq layer from the original.

Not perfect but a lot more interesting a challenge than just redoing the retouch! I'm curious if anyone else has a better way that I looked right past. Thanks!

[skoobey]

Re: Unusual use of frequency separation

Google some more, there is a way to actually extract the color from the high and put it all into low pass, I'll try to find a way to do it.

Note that you have to fix attend to all those curves and dnb you made with hue sat adjustments.

Also, converting it to B&W is very very very limiting, as many masks and effects that affect luminosity are easily extracted form 3 or 4 channels, but not so much when you have only one.

[mistermonday]

Re: Unusual use of frequency separation

I have a special frequency separation technique which completely isolates color from texture. The HF layer carries no color whatsoever which is not the case with the standard FS method. I have combined the HF layer of one image with the LF of another image to make some special effect composites. It will work very well for what you describe as long as you separate both images at the same Radius. But you may need to do some cloning on the color (LF) for those regions where you may have removed some object like an earring, which will not be present in the B&W but it's color will still be there when you composite the two because the color was not removed in the colored version. If you want to post the images I can combine them for you. If you like it and want to learn more, I can post the process.
Cheers, Murray

[grossmisconduct]

Re: Unusual use of frequency separation

Hi! I dont know about the OP but I surely woul love to learn this technique with a HF layers with no colors. Sounds interresting. Please post the prosess if you find time for it.

[mistermonday]

Re: Unusual use of frequency separation

Hi! I dont know about the OP but I surely woul love to learn this technique with a HF layers with no colors. Sounds interresting. Please post the prosess if you find time for it.

Below is a zipped archive containing a tutorial on what I call Asymmetric Frequency Separation as well as two .psd files referenced in the tutorial.
Please let me know if you have any questions or any difficulty downloading the file.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/5uwy39nvfcbcb7z/Asymmetric_FS_Tutorial_MM%2B.zip

Cheers, Murray

[grossmisconduct]

Re: Unusual use of frequency separation

HI! Thank you for sharing and for making a very nice tutorial. I had a quick readthrough and im looking forward to test it out when I have some more time.

[0lBaldy]

Re: Unusual use of frequency separation

Thanks for your generosity Murray!

[SteveSavage]

Re: Unusual use of frequency separation

Awesome Tutorial Murray! You are the man!