The.Photoshop.CS2.Book.for.Digital.Photographers [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Removing Hot Spots

If you've ever had to deal with hot spots (shiny areas on your subject's face caused by uneven lighting or the flash reflecting off shiny surfaces, making your subject look as if he or she is sweating), you know they can be pretty tough to correct. That is, unless you know this trick.

Step One

Open the photo that has hot spots that need to be toned down.

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Step Two

Press S to select the Clone Stamp tool from the Toolbox. In the Options Bar, change the Mode pop-up menu from Normal to Darken, and lower the Opacity to 50%. By changing the Mode to Darken, we'll only affect pixels that are lighter than the area we're sampling (those lighter pixels are the hot spots).

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Step Three

In the Options Bar, click on the thumbnail after the word "Brush" and choose a large, soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker. Then, press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and click once in a clean area of skin (an area with no hot spots). This will be your sample area (or reference point) so Photoshop knows to affect only pixels that are lighter than this.

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Step Four

Start gently painting over the hot-spot areas with the Clone Stamp tool, and as you do, the hot spots will fade away. As you work on different hot spots, you'll have to resample (Option/Alt-click) on nearby areas of skin so the skin tone matches. For example, when you work on the hot spots under her eyes, sample an area of skin from her cheeks (or even her forehead) where no hot spots exist. It's amazing what 60 seconds of hot-spot retouching can do for your image.

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