Teach.Yourself.Adobe.Photoshop.CS2.in.10024.Hours [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Healing Brush and Patch Tools

Retouching has always been one of the major reasons why people buy and learn to use Photoshop. Recognizing this, the folks at Adobe have made the job easier with some tools specifically designed to touch up your photos. They are the Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, and Patch tools.

The Healing Brush, which looks like a Band-Aid, can be applied to any kind of spot that needs removal. Instantly, it's gone, and without affecting anything but the spot. Sort of like digital zit cream. But it works quite differently, by using some fairly complicated math to average the texture, lighting, and shading of each group of pixels in order to locate the ones that are out of the normal range. Those nonconforming pixels represent the spot, and they're simply replaced by pixels that match the average tone that should be there. You can actually watch them change. Of course, you can heal any kind of surface, not just skin.

When using the Healing Brush, you Option+click (Alt+click) to choose a source from which to copy pixels. The difference between the Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp is that the Clone Stamp works by simply copying and pasting the group of pixels you have selected, whereas the Healing Brush melds the replacement pixels into the original ones. The changes are less obvious. In Figure 21.11, I've tried to clean up the stray hair and sweat on the man's forehead with both the Clone Stamp, on the left, and the Healing Brush on the right. Judge for yourself which one looks better. (You really have to see this in color. Flip to the color plate section.) The main thing you need to be careful about is that if you apply the Healing Brush very close to dark hair, it will pick up extra dark pixels and average them into the correction as well, making a darker spot on the face. You can mask the hair before you start, or just use the Clone Stamp on those places.

The Spot Healing Brush is like a quick-and-dirty version of the Healing Brushor maybe that should be quick-and-clean. Instead of defining a point from which to copy new pixels, then painting, all you do with the Spot Healing Brush is click on the spot you want to eliminate. Photoshop looks at the area around the spot, averages the colors it finds, covers the spot with the average color, and blends the repair in with its surroundingsall in about half a second. For slightly larger spots, you can click and drag, but make sure that the spot you're trying to eliminate is located in the middle of a relatively uniform area so that the tool doesn't pull in different-colored pixels from an adjacent area.

For larger areas, there's the Patch tool. Like the Healing Brush tool, it matches the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels. It's not completely opaque, so it blends the new pixels with the old ones, rather than copying and pasting. To use it, you must first decide whether the piece you select is the source or the destination. Click the appropriate button on the Tool Options bar. The tool pointer for the Patch Tool is a lasso. In source mode, select the area you want to replace. Drag the shape you've lassoed over the stuff you want to replace it with, and Photoshop does the rest. In Figure 21.12, you can see how I am using the Patch tool in Destination mode to remove the power lines in the sky. I've already done a piece on the top. I have just dragged the lassoed piece of clean blue sky over the power line on the left side. When I release the mouse button, the patch will fill in.

In the following exercise, you'll use the Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, and Patchand probably all the tricks in the book.