Do You Need to Blend or Cover?

Blend

The retouching will look more realistic, in some situations, if the sampled pixels are blended with the original pixels.

Cover

Let's say you're retouching an old photograph that has a tear in the sky.

You sample the sky where there's no tear.

Then, you apply the Clone Stamp tool brush to the area with the tear.

The tear is covered up completely with the sampled sky.

If you use the Healing Brush tool instead, the sampled sky would be blended with the tear.

The tear would still be partially visible.

Let's remove some wrinkles from the above photograph.

Here they are up close.

Be sure to check off as you go along.

Preparation

1) Preserve your original file.

If you haven't already done so, go to Preserve Your Original File.

2) Create a Background copy layer.

If you haven't already done so, go to Create a Background Copy Layer.

3) Be sure to use the Zoom tool to enlarge the area to be retouched.

Setting Up

1) Select the Healing Brush tool.

It looks like a band-aid.

Don't select the Spot Healing Brush.

The Spot Healing Brush tool looks like a band-aid, but with a dotted area in the bottom left corner of the icon.

2) Select a brush size, in the options bar, that's the size of the wrinkle.

If needed, feather the brush.

If you haven't already done so, go to Feathered Brush.

When retouching skin, to maintain skin texture, use less feathering.

3) Usually, make sure Aligned, in the options bar, is deselected.

Beginners should skip ahead.

Example of Aligned

Aligned needs to be tried out, in order to understand what it does.

Here's a word example to get you started.

To make the feature easier to understand:

• The example isn't a face.

• Two photographs are used, instead of sampling and pasting with only one photograph.

Let's say the sampled photograph has:

On top	A mountain
In the middle	A village on the far shore of a lake
On the bottom	A lake

Aligned Is Selected

When Aligned is selected, the entire sampled photograph is pasted.

Here's what happens when you brush on the destination photograph.

When you brush on the top, the . . .	. . . mountain appears.
When you brush in the middle, the . . .	. . . village appears.
When you brush on the bottom, the . . .	. . . lake appears.

Aligned Is Not Selected

When Aligned isn't selected, the center of the sampled photograph is the "paint" on the brush.

If you click and hold, and brush away, you'll see the sampled photograph emerge.

The village appears, and then the rest of the photograph.

But—if you release the mouse button—and then brush some more—the sampled photograph is once again centered as the paint on the brush.

If you brush on the top of the sampled photograph, the village appears.

If you release the mouse button, and then brush on the bottom, the village appears.

When you brush on the top, the . . .	. . . village appears.
When you brush on the middle*, the . . .	. . . village appears.
When you brush on the bottom*, the . . .	. . .village appears.

* After releasing the mouse button

Go to Aligned on the options bar.

4) Usually, make sure Sample All Layers, in the options bar, is deselected.

If Sample All Layers is selected, for example, the effect of an adjustment layer will be doubled in the area that is retouched with the Healing Brush.

Retouching

1) Make sure the Background copy layer is active (highlighted).

2) Center the brush (the black circle) on an area of the face that's similar in color and texture to the wrinkled area.

Press Alt, hold, and click.

The cursor will change to a bulls-eye when your press and hold Alt.

You've sampled the area.

2) Click the brush multiple times over the wrinkles.

To preserve skin texture, click rather than clicking, holding, and dragging the brush.

If the result is poor, try again.

3) Check your progress by deselecting the eye icon to the left of the Background copy layer.

4) You can fine tune the retouching by adjusting the opacity of the Background copy layer.

Make sure the Background copy layer is active (highlighted).

The Opacity box is at the top of the layers stack, to the right of the Blending Mode box.

It probably has 100% inside.

When the opacity is at 100%, the original photograph is not visible through the copy.

If you change the opacity to, say, 85%, then some of the original photograph is blended with the copy.

This often makes the retouching look more realistic.

5) If the texture of the retouched area differs from the surrounding area, change the Mode from Normal to Replace, and start over.

When Replace is used, the texture around the edge of the brush is used, rather than the texture of the sampled area.

Here's a the retouched photograph and the original.

Retouched

Original

Saving the Photograph

If you haven't already done so, go to Saving Files.

The next section discusses ways to refine the operation of the Healing Brush tool.

1

Next