Retouching Techniques
Frequency Separation: The Technique That Stopped My Edits From Looking Like Plastic
A few years into freelancing, a client sent me feedback that I still think about. She said the model’s skin in my delivery looked “like a wax figure.” She wasn’t wrong. I had been smoothing everything, healing over every pore, every shadow variation, every tiny imperfection, without understanding that those things were not flaws. They were texture. They were what made the face look like a face. I spent the next several months learning frequency separation properly, and it completely changed how I work.