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) Make a Background copy.
If you haven't already done so, go to
Make a Background
Copy.
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 you haven't already done so, go to
Brushes - Basics.
If needed, feather
the brush.
Click the tiny black arrow in the options bar.
Change the Hardness.
0% hardness is maximum feathering.
100% hardness is no feathering.
When retouching skin, to maintain skin texture, use less feathering.
3) Usually, make
sure Aligned, in the options bar, is deselected.
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.
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.
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.
