Manual Frequency Seperation Photoshop style

[Geetardude]

Hi All.

I am completely new to Affinity Photo and I am looking to move over from Photoshop.

Today I have been testing the frequency separation filter in Affinity and sadly I really really do not like the process of using clone, and sample for this.

Instead I would want to use a brush tool as shown in this video my Piximperfect. Is there a way to replicate this, and create an action/macro in Affinity? I really want to have the possibility so simply lower the opacity in the end and blend it in.

Thank or any tips to make this happen

 

[smadell]

Hi, Geetardude.

I watched the video, and I'm not terribly fond of the technique. However, it is quite possible to perform exactly the same technique in Affinity Photo. I also did a macro for you (you're welcome!) that automates this. In the end, you should end up with a merge vislble layer that has been inverted and high passed, with a Gaussian Blur live filter and an inverted mask. You can (i) paint on the mask with White to reveal the skin smoothing; (ii) adjust the amount of smoothing with the Gaussian Blur layer (lower radius = more smoothing); and (iii) adjust the Opacity of the merge visible layer to lower the overall effect.

Unmesh Style Skin Smoothing.afmacros

[smadell]

By the way, in your original post you mentioned that you don't like using the Clone brush during Frequency Separation. I'm assuming that you're talking about smoothing out the skin on the Low Frequency layer. I agree that the clone brush is kind of clunky for this job. I've found that using a blur is often a better (and faster, and easier) way to go. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the PixImperfect method (above), but with what I think is better control.

When I do frequency separation, I use the Affinity Photo menu to create the High and Low Frequency layers. Then, I put a Gaussian Blur live filter on the low pass layer and really crank up the blur to a somewhat ridiculously high number (on the order of 30-40 pixels). Then I invert the blur layer and slowly paint the blur back in, just over the areas where I want the smoothing. Typically, I'll use a paint brush with 50-100% opacity, only 1-2% flow, and 0% hardness. The more I paint, the smoother the skin gets. This gives me nice control, and it also leaves me a High Frequency layer so as to play around with lines and wrinkles as much as I need to.

[Geetardude]

Thanks for the suggestions and the macro. But, n00b me is obviously doing something very wrong as you can see in the attached image

 

[smadell]

Jeez...

I'm not sure what happened there! Is your original image an RGB image? Is there a blend mode on your brush? (you can set a blend mode for the brush in the context toolbar - make sure it's set to "Normal") Did you paint anything on any layer other than the "Paint white to Reveal..." mask layer? Try opening the "Adjust Amt of Smoothing..." layer and bringing the radius of the blur up or down - does that change anything? This looks really strange, and I'm not sure what happened.

[Geetardude]

Hi Smadell

I Appreciate you help. To answer your questions,

1.I open the image from inside Lightroom and send it over as TIFF and ProPhoto RGB

2. my brush blend is set to normal as far as I understand

3.Did not paint on any layer than "Paint white to reveal..."

4. Tried with both 69 pix radius and 3 pix radius of blur

 

[Geetardude]

Actually, when I turn off the "Amount of smooth" it does look closer to the ballpark of what I want to achieve (although a bit extreme as the opacity is on 100% there and not my prefered 25-35% ), but once I turn it on, the artifact happen

[smadell]

Now, I have no idea how this might have happened. But, I’m going to bet that the Blend Mode of the layer called “Merge Visible, inverted” is no longer set to Vivid Light. Rather, I’ll bet that it is set to “Hard Mix.” I’m not sure what happened, but if you set it back to Vivid Light, everything should normalize.

Maybe try the macro on a fresh photo. Or, delete and re-import the category.

Mac or Windows? If Mac, which version of the OS? Don’t know if any of that matters, though...

[Geetardude]

Believe it or not, but it IS actually on Vivid Light

[smadell]

I'm at a complete loss, here. I've tried the macro on several photos, including JPG, TIFF, and .afphoto files. I've tried it on images with very small dimensions and with very large dimensions. I've tried turning the Gaussian Blur layer off and on. Nothing I've done seems to make a difference, and I cannot recreate what's happening in your photos (except when i change the blend mode of the parent layer to Hard Mix). If you read up on what the Hard Mix blend mode actually does, it is designed specifically to create this sort of effect. (Why anyone would want to use is is another question...) But if that is not the case, I'm afraid I can't make any other suggestions! Sorry – I thought I could solve this particular problem, but it seems to have eluded me...

[Dan C]

Hi @smadell / @Geetardude - sorry to see you're having trouble!

The difference causing the artifacting you're seeing is due to the document being in RGB/16 bit.

I can confirm that using the above macro on an 8bit document works correctly, if you convert this document to 16bit then you see the artefacts appear.

I'm not currently sure if this is by design or not, as this could be happening due to how blending is achieved in higher bit-depth images - therefore I'll log this with our development team now for further investigation to ensure we are calculating this specific workflow correctly!

In the meantime, Geetardude, you can use Document > Convert Format / ICC Profile to change the document from 16bit to 8bit. Alternatively you could adjust your Lightroom settings to provide Affinity with an 8bit image to begin with -

I hope this helps

[Gnobelix]

Hello @Geetardude,

the macro provided by @smadell  works very well in the current beta (903), at all bit levels (RGB / 8, RGB / 16, RGB32).

It's worth a try.

Cheers

[Dan C]

Thanks @Gnobelix - I had forgotten to test this in beta also!

[smadell]

Thanks for figuring rhis out, @Dan C. I thought I had checked all the variations I could, but never looked at bit depth.

[Geetardude]

Big thanks to @smadell for the script, and @Dan C and @Gnobelix for additional help. Great help in these forums. I decided to buy Affinity Photo as a result. And then we will see over time if I decide to ditch Photoshop and and only Keep Lightroom :D

Will continue and play around with it and hopefully the 16bit will be supported in production version soon