Frequency Separation for
Landscape Photography

How to replace colour without replacing texture
This example is a simple one to kick things off with. Suppose you wanted to clone the peachy coloured patch of paint out to make the wall a solid pink (below)...

Normal cloning methods would have you sampling the pink wall and painting it over the peach. The original texture of the peach patch would be lost, and you end up with repeated patterns in the texture and potentially fuzzy edges where the cloned parts meet the original parts.

However, with Frequency Separation we are able to clone the pink into the peach whilst retaining the original texture. All the bubbles and bumps remain, meaning no repeating patterns and seamless blending.

How to seamlessly remove lens flare
Of all the techniques available to remove lens flare from a photo, I've never seen one give such a seamless result as Frequency Separation. The ability to literally paint it away while keeping the underlying texture is priceless. No longer do we need to find another part of the image that kinda matches, but doesn't quite, to clone over the flare.

This is a relatively easy/small example compared to some of the lens flares we're removing later in these videos, but demonstrates the techniques power.

How to fix discolourations in water / seascapes
There are a hundred reasons why water in a seascape/landscape might have an undesirable discolouration. In the example below (left), it's the purple-ish tint around the rock in the middle caused by the sun. Other times it might be something under the surface giving an unwanted cast, or some dirty sea foam muddying the waters on a long exposure.

Frequency separation gives us the power to remove these discolourations with ease, again without replacing any of the original texture in the water.

How to smooth texture without just making everything blurry
Here's a great example of using frequency separation on a landscape in a similar way to how it's used in portrait photography. Except here it's on a much larger scale.

Suppose we want to remove the bits of sand where the surface has been disturbed, or has small debris scattered around. Typically we could use the spot healing brush (difficult to pull off over a large area) or the clone stamp. The problem with the clone stamp is that there are subtle light and colour differences between the "clean" sand you'd want to sample from, and the area you're cloning into.

Frequency separation gives us the ability to clone the texture of the "clean" sand into the desired areas whilst retaining the original light and colour of that area. Very powerful stuff.

How to remove EXTREME lens flare
The image below is one I captured in the middle of the day, pointing directly towards the sun. The lens flare rendered this shot virtually unusable. Until I discovered Frequency Separation.
Don't get me wrong, it still takes time to do...

But the ability to separate colour from texture when cloning the flare out is the most effective (and probably the quickest) way to achieve a result.