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One of the biggest challenges when you shoot a portrait is to capture your subject’s skin tone as evenly as possible. The best way to do this is to avoid direct light, which causes harsh shadows and bright hotspots. But there are many other reasons why a subject’s skin tone might not be consistent. We photographed our model Jessica (Instagram: @connor_and_jessica) at a botanical garden, on a bracing autumn’s day. Cold weather causes skin to flush; and light, reflected off of foliage, causes green colour casts. Thankfully, there’s a clever way to fix these problems in post-production: frequency separation.
• Read more: The best Nikon portrait lenses
This technique is so-called because it splits an image’s high and low frequencies – essentially, texture and colour – into separate layers. This means you can even out tones without actually removing the details and character of a person’s skin. We used Adobe Photoshop CC to showcase this technique, but you can apply the principles in other layer-based editing applications, such as Affinity Photo.
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