In fringe projection profilometry, phase shifting (PS) is the most used technique for phase retrieval. However, it suffers from periodicity of sine wave in PS; the result is wrapped into [-π,π]; and additional phase unwrapping (PU) is necessary to retrieve the absolute phase. In this paper, a more general technique termed frequency shifting is proposed, based on which the behavior of periodicity is eliminated and absolute phase can be retrieved pixelwisely without any phase unwrapping. The effectiveness of the proposed technique was verified by extensive experimental results, and they demonstrate comparable performance with those of the traditional technique combining PS and PU even in only one step and less projection.