Quick Tip Tuesday – Help for Healers

One of the best things about Photoshop has always been the Clone tool.  We used the clone tool to fill in blank areas and extend photos, to retouch blemishes and creases in photos, and to smooth out wrinkles.

But the Clone tool was a little difficult – it created visible patterns or over-smoothed skin very easily unless you were very careful and skilled.  All the clone tool does is copies pixels from one place and pastes them down where you tell it to -  simple but not the best results.

So a while ago Photoshop started introducing the “Healing” tools.  These tools use some complicated mathematics to improve your results.  They do this by taking into account the texture, color and luminosity of the sampled area and merging it mathematically with the destination pixels.  This lets the program maintain the look of the original area without making it look artificially smooth.

Now we have three different options: the Clone tool, the Healing Brush tool and the Spot Healing Brush tool.  Today we’re going to try to help you understand which tool to use when, and why!

HOW THEY WORK

Clone Tool – as we said above: it simply copies pixels from one place and pastes them down where you tell it to put them.  You can adjust the opacity of the pixels you paste down, but that’s about it.  Press the Alt key and click on the spot where you want to grab the pixels from, then move the cursor over where you want to paste the pixels and click.  You need to use a soft (blurry edged) brush to better blend the pasted pixels into the existing photo.

Healing Brush – this works like the Clone Tool only in that you have to set the source for the healing.  Hold the Alt key and click on a spot that looks good, then move your cursor over a spot that needs fixing, and click (and drag if necessary).  This works amazingly for fixing wrinkles!  What the program is doing is looking at the pixels you sampled, then looking at the pixels you want to fix (the ones you click and dragged over) and making the new pixels match the old ones in terms of texture, color and luminosity.  This means you don’t get ‘super smooth’ skin, or the kind of patterns you can see with the clone tool.  You should use a hard edged brush with this tool, as the program spreads out 10-12 pixels and blends the edges.  The only time this will give you a problem is when you are working next to an area of contrasting color.  The program may pick up some of the other color and include it in the fixed pixels.  When you get into that situation, you’ll need to go back to the Clone Tool.

Spot Healing Brush – this works just like the Healing Brush, but without needing to hold the Alt key to take a sample.  The program looks at the area you clicked on, checks the pixels right around it, and replaces the area with pixels that match the surrounding pixels.  You will notice a black dot while it does the calculations, don’t worry, it will go away once it’s finished thinking.  This tool has the same problem as the Healing Brush – if you are too close to an area that is a lot lighter or darker – then it may sample that and include it in the results.  Again, you’re back to using the Clone tool to fix those things.  This includes if you have a spot that’s very close to another spot.

WHEN DO I USE WHICH TOOL?

Use the Spot Healing Brush:

• dust spots
• small blemishes

Use the Healing Brush:

• to smooth skin
• under eye bags
• wrinkles
• stains on clothing

Use the Clone Tool:

• to fill in blank area (such as copying grass or sky to make an image larger)
• when working on or near the edge between two contrasting areas.
• whenever you don’t like the results you get with the other two tools!

There are way more details on retouching photos with these tools, but we’ll have to save those for another post.  I hope this encourages you to try fixing up some photos with these wonderful healing tools!

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