Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching

Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching – When it comes to retouching skin in Photoshop, there are many tools and techniques at your disposal. Some of these are very simple and self-explanatory, such as the Healing Brush. Others, such as frequency division, are complex multi-step processes. It has Photoshop features so obscure that you’ll never figure it out on your own. Many skin retouching techniques are useful and work well in combination with each other.

This article will give you some tips on how to get the most out of the most common and useful (read: my opinion) of these techniques. It is assumed that you have a basic understanding of how to use it. If you don’t, there are many good quality tutorials out there.

Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching

Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching

The healing brush is probably the first thing you reach for when retouching skin in Photoshop. It’s a somewhat intuitive tool, doesn’t take much time to understand, and is very effective at what it does.

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When working with the Healing Brush, make sure you are working on a new empty layer. This way you can make sure you don’t change your original image. This also allows you to make changes later.

To do this, press the New Layer button on the Layers palette or press Ctrl+Shift+n (Cmd+Shift+n Mac). When setting the new layer, make sure the Healing Brush dropdown labeled ‘Sample’ is set to Current and Lower.

Working on a blank layer ensures that you can undo any changes if you decide to do so later.

You can quickly change the size of your brush with the combination key ( ). Try to keep the brush large enough to cover only the stain you are trying to remove.

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For best results, use a brush size slightly larger than the stain you’re trying to remove. This ensures that you don’t alter the skin’s natural pattern too much.

Don’t just choose once, do it often. Do this between each stain if you can. This may seem like a lot of effort, but with practice it really isn’t. Your photos will be even better.

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Zoom in as far as you need to to make sure you’re only trying to heal the pimples, and not the area of ​​skin around them.

Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching

I understand the reluctance of some photographers to zoom in 400% to 500% for the sake of retouching, but by doing so you only affect the parts of the subject’s skin that need it.

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This tip (and the next one) doesn’t just apply to healing brushes. Do this with all the skin retouching techniques listed here.

When you really zoom in on your subject, you can get lost in all the details you can now see. Be sure to zoom out again regularly to make sure the changes you make actually affect what you can see in the 100% image. This can save hours.

Instead of painting with a healing brush, you simply tap (or click with the mouse) once on the area you’re trying to eliminate. This limits changes in the surrounding skin.

Painting with a healing brush leads to fantastic works of art. To avoid this, click on the spot you want to remove and nothing else.

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The Patch Tool is a powerful tool that lets you select the area you want to retouch with the lasso and then drag it over the sample area you want to use to fill the first area. It is quite easy to use, but it can be difficult at first.

If you’ve already created some layers and worked on them at this point, you can press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E (Cmd+Alt+Shift+E – Mac) to create a new layer with all these adjustments merged. .

This allows you to reduce the visibility of what you’ve done with the correction tool if you go too far. It also makes it easy to remove stock and start over if necessary.

Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching

The patch tool cannot be used with an empty layer. Instead, duplicate your background layer and work with the copy. Later in your workflow, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+e (Cmd+Alt+Shift+e) to stamp all existing layers on top of the rest.

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When it comes to skins, the content-aware patch tool never works very well. Instead, leave the mode to Normal and use the correction tool that way. For things like backgrounds, at least use content-aware; Just avoid it for skin retouching.

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Content-aware fill, because it works with the patch tool, is good for many things, but skin is not one of them. Although this is sampled from a very similar part of his face, the brain of the material has messed it up.

It’s tempting to just pick a large area of ​​skin and try that way. However, this will only serve to create some artifacts on your subject’s skin. By keeping your choices small, you’ll have more control over the end result and fewer problems later.

If possible, use the preview area as your preferred area. This reduces the chance of creating problematic artifacts and blurring.

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Here you will see different areas with similar tonality circled in red. When using the patch tool, try to sample from the same range of tonality.

After you’re done with the patch tool, you can reduce the opacity of the layer you’re working on. This can help hide a heavy approach and give more natural results. This tip also applies to almost all other skin retouching techniques.

When retouching skin in Photoshop, the Clone Stamp tool is probably one of your least used tools. It is difficult to use and it is often easier and faster to get the same results with other techniques. The only notable exception is when using frequency division (described below).

Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching

This may be a matter of preference, but Clone Stamp is a heavy duty tool that makes drastic changes with a single click. Using a soft-edged brush minimizes the impact on the area of ​​skin surrounding the stain you’re removing.

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This may be preferable, but most of the time you want to use the softest brush possible when using clone stamps. A clone stamp is a very invasive tool that can undesirably affect skin patterns if used carelessly.

As with the healing brush, do your best not to paint any areas of skin with the clone stamp. Try to limit the affected area to a scar, hole or other blemish.

Although the sample area was fairly uniform, you can see the result of painting with the Clone Stamp tool in larger strokes.

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Again, this may be a personal preference, but try reaching for Clone Stamp if it’s the only tool left for the job, at least when it comes to skinning. The problems this tool can cause with strange deviations in skin texture patterns are hardly worth the risk.

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Frequency division is one of those techniques that, at first glance, looks like overly complicated wizardry. Once you learn the basics of the technique and how to set it up, it’s actually pretty easy. It’s also a very powerful technique that can change your skin retouching workflow. It is; However, it is very easy to go overboard with this technique and a heavy hand will produce less than ideal results. Once you’ve mastered the basics of implementation and frequency division, there are a few tips to help you get the best results.

When setting up your frequency separation layers, keep the Gaussian Blur settings as low as possible while hiding all the detail in the subject’s skin.

“4” is a good number to start with, but it can vary depending on the resolution you’re working with and how much of the frame your subject’s face fills.

Step-by-step Guide To Using The Healing Brush For Photo Retouching

When setting your low frequency layer, use enough opacity to remove all skin texture in that layer. Here Gaussian Blur was set to 2.

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When applying Gaussian Blur to your low frequency layer, make sure the amount of blur is equal to or less than the amount you used when setting the layer.

Bleach only areas of skin with the same shade. Blurred midtones and highlights (or shadows and midtones or some other combination) can result in washed out tones that often don’t look good. Limit your selection to areas of similar tonality to avoid that muddy tone.

When fading out parts of your low-frequency level, try to make your selections in areas of similar tones. This will still help smooth out the tonal transitions without making them muddy.

Make sure you zoom in on your images at least 100% so you can notice them

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