Saving A Bad Retouch | Recovering Texture and Tone From an Overdone Retouch

Mar 192015

httpvh://youtu.be/hRhhmHZ66rc

Knowing when to stop is the hardest lesson to learn for those new to retouching. In this tutorial we will look at how to recover lost texture and over smoothed skin tones, even when your file has been flattened. In this image the texture has been over retouched resulting in a significant loss in the skin texture. The transitions between skin tones have also been slightly overdone. Frequency Separation is a term we see in retouching all the time its also a technique I’m working on using less and less and bring in as a last resort. By using frequency separation here we can borrow texture and tone from the original, straight out of camera, image. This saves us from having to scrap the work that has been done and can save us hours of work.

Above is a sample from another image in the same series. The middle image is the original and un-edited image. On the left is an over edited version of the image, in this version the texture information has been stripped out. On the right is the correct or properly retouched version. There is much less of a change from the original. Larger texture has been replaced and tones have been smoothed out, but with dodge and burn instead of frequency separation. There is no frequency separation work done on the right hand version at all.

fstoppers