Retouching
Frequency Separation in Photoshop: Retouch Skin Without Destroying Texture
A few years back I got a portrait job where the client handed me 200 RAW files from a corporate headshot session. Harsh fluorescent lighting, mixed skin tones, every subject photographed in under two minutes. The brief was simple: clean, consistent, professional. The deadline was 48 hours. Before I knew frequency separation properly, that job would have wrecked me. I would have been painting and blending and clone stamping until my wrist gave out, and I still would have delivered soft, waxy skin that looked more like a video game character than a human being.