This Frequency Separation Photoshop Action Makes Skin Silky Smooth

December 10, 2024

Need a quick and easy tool to airbrush skin? Here is it. Download this free Photoshop action to retouch skin. It uses the frequency separation technique to make skin look smooth yet natural.

Download

Download the action below. To use it, drag and drop the ATN file into Photoshop's Actions panel. You can find the Actions panel by going to Window > Actions.

Using the Actions

Open the actions panel. If you can't find it, go to Window > Actions. You will find the actions here. If you don't, drag and drop the ATN file into this panel.

Select the Frequency Separation action then click the play button.

You'll see Photoshop doing a bunch of task at lightning speed. Then, you'll get a message telling you to paint over the skin. Click continue.

Before you paint, there's a few settings you need to check. In the options bar, make sure that it has these settings:

  • Blending Mode: Normal
  • Opacity: 100%

Right-click on your photo then pick a brush.

Now you can paint over the skin. As you paint, you'll see the airbrushing effect.

The results look super strong, but don't worry. It's like this so that you can see where you are painting.

Go to the Layers panel and reduce the layer opacity. It looks much better at 50%.

You're done. These actions make retouching fast and simple.

If you need something more professional, here are the best frequency separation actions. There's nothing else like it. It uses face detection and works with 16/32-bit photos.

I'm interested in how you used this. If you've used it, please let me know in the comments. I hope you enjoy this free action 🙂

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11 comments on “This Frequency Separation Photoshop Action Makes Skin Silky Smooth”

  1. This is NOT frequency separation. Frequency separation is a delicate skill that this does NOT accomplish. Do us a favour and leave this to the pros will ya?

    1. Totally, this is just skin smoothing, you're losing the detail in the skin. You can do the same with surface blur and layer mask in filters.

    2. If lowpass and highpass layers is not frequency separation, what is frequency separation? I'm waiting...

  2. Once in a while I am floored by what you can do with Photoshop. Even if you think you know what all of the tools inside the program do, you are never aware of all the hidden gems just like this. Thank you for the tip!

  3. I haven’t used Photoshop in several years so I was surprised to see how easy it is to airbrush skin using this technique. Now I’m going to wonder how many of my FB friends’ pics have been touched up as it seems like anyone can do this with this simple Photoshop technique.

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