Regular splitting (how to lighten the skin of PhotoshopPerity)
A common misconception that many people believe is that skin retouching should focus on getting rid of the texture and making the skin smooth. This may be incorrect - skin texture actually brings the photo to life and can help it appear much more realistic.
My goal when retouching a photo is generally to repair any temporary skin imperfections, such as skin redness or blotchiness, as well as fix or enhance shadows. In most situations, you should stray away from manipulating the model's actual features as these are what makes them unique. To accomplish this, I use a Photoshop technique called Frequency Separation and will show you exactly how I do this.
STEP 1: CREATING THE FREQUENCY SEPARATION LAYERS
The purpose of this technique is to separate the texture on an individual's face from the tone and shadows in the photo by placing them on separate layers . This is done so you can edit inconsistency in the colors, shadows, and highlights without destroying the texture and vice versa.
Here is the original image that I will be working with:
Once you have your photo uploaded into photoshop, press the “command” and “J” keys twice on your image layer. This will create two additional copies of the photo. Next, click the eye button to hide the top layer. Name this layer “texture” and name the layer below this “base layer.”
STEP 2: SKIN RETOUCHING ON THE SEPARATED LAYERS
Now that the layers are separated through Frequency Separation, we can begin to edit and retouch the "base layer" and "texture" layer separately with the option to use two different techniques:
SKIN RETOUCH TECHNIQUE 1
This technique requires painting on the face using the healing brush. Select the healing brush from the toolbar on the left side of the screen. This works best when paired with a drawing tablet.
Before performing this action, ensure that you are on your "base layer".