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Frequency Separation vs Wavelet Decompose


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I'm a full time photographer, and I work primarily with people.  I do a -lot- of skin smoothing and fixing, and one of my most powerful tools is the Wavelet Decompose plugin for GIMP.  It's essentially the equivalent of using Frequency Separation, but with a one-step process to generate a user-definable number of layers.  For the 36-mpix images from my D800, I use 7 layers.

 

Each of these layers gives me the ability to reduce the detail in varying degrees of courseness.  Typically I use layers 3-5: 3 for small facial detail, 5 for the blotchiness us humans are so good at, and layer 4 for all things in between.  For really large areas like thighs, I use layer 6.  This is 4 layers I use on just about every single image.  I flick up and down the layers and adjust different layers of detail depending on where I'm working on the body, and how effective the changes are.

 

Frequency Separation, as seen in AP and Ps, seems like an intensely cumbersome way of accomplishing what is a smooth process in GIMP.

 

I'm looking for advice: is there a way to do something like this in AP?  (I've never used Ps, (I have a philosophical objection to Adobe) so I don't have this experience to bring over).

 

As near as I can tell, the process in AP requires me to manually select a degree of separation to work on -every time- I want to make a change.  Separate, edit, merge, separate differently, edit, merge, separate the first one again 'cause I missed a bit, edit, merge, repeat ad nauseum.

 

Is this really how it works, or am I missing something?  Any recommendations would be cheerfully accepted, 'cause most of AP is great, but this is like 80% of my workflow and as I understand it, it's ...  less than ideal.  #totesdiplomatic

 

Thanks in advance.   ^_^

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Hi NFG

 

Our Frequency Separation is based on the high pass and subtract method on only produces the two layers. It was deigned to provide that in a single step rather than having to use calculations and add blurs separately. I;m not sure on a method to create the more advance smoothing you are used too, but we don't have a dedicated tool or process for it in Affinity beyond what you have already found. I shall leave this to someone with a bit more knowledge in the community to provide a process that may suit your needs

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  • 2 months later...

I'm also interested in "Skin Smoothing".  PaintShop Pro has a "skin smoothing" tool that makes this process downright trivially simple (and thus fast and easy to do).  Apparently I have to research and study "Frequency Separation" (a completely non-intuitive term).

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Perhaps you can automate the creation of said layers by recording a Macro...?

 

I'm a full time photographer, and I work primarily with people.  I do a -lot- of skin smoothing and fixing, and one of my most powerful tools is the Wavelet Decompose plugin for GIMP.  It's essentially the equivalent of using Frequency Separation, but with a one-step process to generate a user-definable number of layers.  For the 36-mpix images from my D800, I use 7 layers.

 

Each of these layers gives me the ability to reduce the detail in varying degrees of courseness.  Typically I use layers 3-5: 3 for small facial detail, 5 for the blotchiness us humans are so good at, and layer 4 for all things in between.  For really large areas like thighs, I use layer 6.  This is 4 layers I use on just about every single image.  I flick up and down the layers and adjust different layers of detail depending on where I'm working on the body, and how effective the changes are.

 

Frequency Separation, as seen in AP and Ps, seems like an intensely cumbersome way of accomplishing what is a smooth process in GIMP.

 

I'm looking for advice: is there a way to do something like this in AP?  (I've never used Ps, (I have a philosophical objection to Adobe) so I don't have this experience to bring over).

 

As near as I can tell, the process in AP requires me to manually select a degree of separation to work on -every time- I want to make a change.  Separate, edit, merge, separate differently, edit, merge, separate the first one again 'cause I missed a bit, edit, merge, repeat ad nauseum.

 

Is this really how it works, or am I missing something?  Any recommendations would be cheerfully accepted, 'cause most of AP is great, but this is like 80% of my workflow and as I understand it, it's ...  less than ideal.  #totesdiplomatic

 

Thanks in advance.   ^_^

2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6

2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17

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  • 1 year later...

You could reapply the Frequency Separation to the Low Frequency layer (residuals) several times, with a higher radius each time. For example, the first application could be at 2px, a second at 4px, a third at 8px etc for as many passes as you require. The High Frequency layers are all blended with Linear Light (the same as Grain Merge in GIMP), and can be treated the same. I tried Pat David's GIMP tutorials using Affinity and it seems to work.

 

It could be automated with a macro, but I can't figure out a way of passing parameters - I would need a starting radius and a increase factor.

 

Such fun,

Biff

 

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FilterForge offers a wavelet decomposition filter. FF should now work with Affinity. 

Edit:

This filter installs into FilterForge 6 running as a plugin to Affinity. I have not tried it in earnest yet though.

John

Edited by John Rostron
Further information.

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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1 hour ago, BiffBrown said:

You could reapply the Frequency Separation to the Low Frequency layer (residuals) several times, with a higher radius each time. For example, the first application could be at 2px, a second at 4px, a third at 8px etc for as many passes as you require. The High Frequency layers are all blended with Linear Light (the same as Grain Merge in GIMP), and can be treated the same. I tried Pat David's GIMP tutorials using Affinity and it seems to work.

It could be automated with a macro, but I can't figure out a way of passing parameters - I would need a starting radius and a increase factor.

 

You can record your macro and after stop recording adjust the radius setting for the macro. So when the macro is later executed it will always popup with a radius setup panel first.

freq_makro.jpg.88d7595304fc45d7f61ac815bfc7c43f.jpg

Since there is no repeated run and auto increase factor setting, you would have to rerun that macro either manually several times and alter the radius in the popup panel accordingly, or record a macro where you already applied the frequency separation several times with different applied radius values.

 

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  • 1 year later...

Neat to see this thread getting some attention two years after I wrote it.  Thanks for all your suggestions.  =)

I just checked out Filter Forge (Thanks John Rostron).   $80 (80% off - $400 normally!) is way too much to pay for one function, so that's sort of out.  I suspect I'll just stick to GIMP for my frequency separation needs...  Unless the macro recording functionality in Photo gets an update.  =)

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In the past I have used the AI_WaveletSharpen  from Astra Images. It is supposed to work with PhotoShop, and it installs into Photo. However, if I try to use it I get a message:

"The Astra Image Photoshop plugins do not support images with transparency, and cannot operate on image layers. Please use a flattened image or select the Background layer."

My image is a single layer labelled Background (pixel).

It could be that when I used it before it was as a standalone, but I cannot see any such standalone in my installation.

You might try and seek out Astra Image and see if it works for you.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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Here is a macro that generates several layers, with progressively wider criteria for Frequency Separation. It creates layers with 2, 4, 8,16 and 32px separations, plus a residual layer.

FreqSep Layers.afmacro

Frequency Separation.afmacros

The first is a single macro, the second is a macro library containing this single macro.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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