Frequency Separation for Models and Headshots

There are other videos out there discussing frequency separation, and how to use it for models and headshots. This one is easily the best, since it goes into detail about what you’re doing and why.

If you didn’t know, frequency separation is the method in Photoshop to do a real, but tasteful retouching. If you look at a model’s picture and you think “this looks airbrushed,” then they didn’t do it right.

By carefully minding how you “airbrush” a model’s images, you can clean up blemishes and color irregularities, while keeping the humanity — and appearance of reality — in the picture. In simple terms, what you do is to smooth out tones in the face, while keeping the pores intact. This doesn’t happen if you’re using the clone tool a lot, or if you’re doing some gaussian blurs. Blurring effects on skin tone can be a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. While it will smooth things, it will also kill some of the finer detail that you want to keep, that little detail without which your model is thrust into the uncanny valley; that is, looking a little bit un-human.

Anyway, if you’re a beginner or an amateur, or even intermediate in photo retouching, you may not know about this method for professional image editing. It’s very much worth learning about.

Gearing Up For Fall

Andeamo has been really busy lately. Photography job in Dallas, then off to Corona, CA the very same day. There’s nothing like a good night’s wakefulness followed by a three-hour commute across scorching California freeways.

There are busy times of year in the photo business, but it depends what your specialty is. Weddings obviously are going to come mostly in Spring and Summer, but we don’t do a lot of those. No opposition to it, it’s just one of those occasional kinds of things. Our bread and butter is working large corporate events, and frankly, they’re more fun. These can come any time of year, but they’re more cool-color-season type of events.

And boy does it feel good stay busy. Jet-setting through every major American city over the last twenty years has been a treat and an experience. You get a good feel for the lay of the land, and the lay of the human animal. There will be jet lag, but how do you know you’ve been anywhere and done anything if you don’t have jet lag? 

‘Tis the season for anticipating Santa pictures. So many Santa pictures.