• 0
  • 0
Alan Brown's picture

Frequency separation as a landscape tool

As I lay sick on the sofa a few weeks ago I came across YouTube videos on how to use the frequency separation tool in Photoshop.
Although FS is most often used in portrait & fashion retouching (remove blemished in skin whilst maintaining structure) I did find some videos that identify it's benefits in landscape photography.

Basically FS separates the color content and the detail/structure of an image on separate layers so you can work on each without affecting the other. This can work well on images where distractions/blemishes cannot be adequately removed by other means (like spot healing brush, cloning or content-aware fills).

The following image is one where I experimented with FS to remove a distraction that really destroyed the image. I don't believe anything near this could have been achieved otherwise.

Just something to be aware of - it could save some of those 'almost' images that you may bin otherwise.

I'd be interested to hear how/if others are using FS and where they are seeing the greatest benefits.

Log in or register to post comments
1 Comment

It's certainly surprising how much FS changes the image (if it accounts for most of the difference in the two), Alan - but I like 'em both! Probably the bottom one more, though.