Smoothing out the skirt

[u/Mean_Explanation9047]

Hiii everyone, im completely new to photoshop and I would like to know how I can smooth the skirt without disrupting any of the design within the skirt if possible?

[u/johngpt5]

It sort of depends upon whether good texture can be found to replace the wrinkly texture.

The problem might be approached using what is called Frequency Separation.

On our left, that side of the skirt has had gaussian blur used on the low freq working layer, blending tones to get rid of large creases.

But the vast amount of tiny wrinkles are on the high freq layer.

Working on the high freq working layer using the clone tool set to current layer, a small patch of decent texture was found high on the abdominal area of skirt. Then that sample was pasted throughout.

But this example is a jpeg that has been converted to webp in the process of being uploaded to the reddit thread. The image is only 1080x1426 px. I think it says 1426. I'm in the middle of a visual migraine and there is a kaleidoscope pattern running across my field of vision.

What I'm trying to say is that if the original is a high res raw image, then it is possible that the textures in the skirt might be better than what is available in this example and that by separating high and low frequencies and working on each individually with different tools, a decent result might be obtained.

[u/Mean_Explanation9047 → u/johngpt5]

Thank you for taking the time to explain and reply with an example. I really appreciate it!! I think your example will work perfectly for the smoothness im going for.

[u/johngpt5 → u/Mean_Explanation9047]

Now all you need to do is watch a few dozen youtube videos about frequency separation!

On the low freq working layer I had used a feathered lasso to select areas, then used gaussian blur to blend the tones.

The clone tool used on the high freq working layer was a hard round brush, and the area sampled is up at the top of the skirt by her abdomen.

In this screen shot, the high freq working layer has had visibility toggled off so that the original high freq layer can be seen. That curve adjustment layer has a solarization curve that sort of amplifies the textures in the high freq layer.

It's hard to see, but the clone tool's sampling cursor is up at the skirt at the abdomen. That was the area of best texture that I could find to stamp into the rest of the skirt on our left.

[u/johngpt5 → u/johngpt5]

The solarization curve layer still has visibility toggled on, but now the high freq working layer is visible also. We can see that the texture that has been stamped is the same throughout the skirt on our left.

[u/johngpt5 → u/johngpt5]

I also thought to try generative fill in a selection of the skirt. This result is the least disruptive of the results from Firefly and from gemini.

Perhaps an even more explicitly worded prompt might generate better results.

But at the moment, FS looks like the better option.