Photoshop offers a large selection of tools and features for retouching photographs and images. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the common touch-up tools.
Spot Healing Brush Tool
The Spot Healing Brush is primarily used to quickly remove blemishes, imperfections or other unwanted elements from an image. To use it, paint over an imperfection you’d like to get rid of using a suitable brush (brushes can be selected and modified in the options bar). The Spot Healing Brush Tool will automatically try to repair the imperfection by sampling the surrounding area.
Healing Brush Tool
The Healing Brush Tool performs a similar function to the spot healing brush tool mentioned above. Instead of automatically trying to determine the lighting, shading, and texture from the surrounding area, the healing brush tool lets you manually select a source, and then paint over an imperfection. To select a source, hold alt and click the desired part of the image. Then paint over the area you wish to replace. As with the Spot Healing Brush Tool, settings such as brush size can be controlled in the options bar.
Patch Tool
With the Patch Tool, an entire area can be repaired with pixels from another area. Just like the healing brush tool, the patch tool will try to correct lighting, shading, and texture. To use the patch tool, first draw a selection with any of the selection tools (or the patch tool, which will function as a lasso tool). Then, using the patch tool, drag that selection over the destination you want to use to repair that area.
Clone Stamp Tool
The final tool we’ll cover in this tutorial is called the Clone Stamp Tool. The Clone stamp tool allows you to paint with a sample of an image.
Blur & Sharpen Tools
The Blur and Sharpen Tools allow us to manipulate edges by making them softer or harder. They do exactly what you would expect them to do; blur and sharpen.
Both tools have similar attributes such as Strength (increase or decrease the strength of the tool, or how much it will blur) and the brush, all of which can be adjusted in the Options Bar for each tool. To use the blur or sharpen tool, simply set up the brush to your specification, hold down the mouse button, and hover over the areas you’d like to alter in your image.
You should have a pretty good feel of the basic retouching tools by now. The next step in mastering Photoshop is usually learning how to use the painting tools to compliment your photo remastering abilities!
Photoshop’s Toolbox
Photoshop’s Painting Tools
The Selection Tools
Create a Simple Flyer
Now thats what you call a tutorial. Thats astounding, very well layed out, easy to understand and it even learned me a few things. Keep them coming david! They are just amazing.
It is a very good tutorial, but I wish Tut9 will start offering some more advanced stuff soon.
Very well explained David. You should definitely use those rollover examples more often. They help show what you mean very well.
Keep it up man!
Thanks everyone! I really appreciate all of your kind words! Keeps me motivated, and very thankful for our kind community here at Tutorial9.
@ CJ.H - We’ll be writing for all levels of Photoshop Users here at Tutorial9, and right now I’m pretty fixated on this “School of Photoshop” series. Once I’m through with this, we’ll have a really good base for beginner users to start from, and I can get back to more advanced Photoshop Tutorials
Stick around, you won’t be disappointed! Until then, you’re presence in the community is something we consider priceless!
@ Marcus - With the help of the rest of the staff here at Tutorial9, we are frequently coming up with newer and better ways to better explain and teach. The rollover demonstrations are just one of the many ways we here at Tutorial9 are doing everything we can to help folks like you. You may have also noticed the useful asides that are starting to show up in Tutorials (More Info, Tip, Caution, Note, etc).
By the way, the beautiful icons used in those asides were designed by our very own Fredrik Silverglimth.
Awesome, I cant wait. Tutorial9 has some of the best tuts on the web, better written on average then any else I could find.
NIce site
This stuff really is awesome. Just when I thought I knew my way around Photoshop, there’s always one little tip in each tutorial that is something new to me. Keep the awesome stuff coming man.
Jimmy
I just used this tutorial a bit and wanted to show some results..
http://blog.matthewkammerer.com/2008/05/18/some-basic-photoshop-touch-ups/
@ CJ.H - Thanks mate! You’ve been a real pleasure to have around here! The team and I will continue to try and keep up the quality in all of our future tutorials!
@ Jimmy Root - Happens to me all the time, and I’ve been working in Photoshop for years. It’s strange sometimes when you realize how much time you can save with the smallest changes in your workflow, isn’t it?
@ Matthew - Really nice work mate! Thanks for sharing! I love seeing results after writing a tutorial!
Really good job. Rollovers are nice too.
Brilliant. Especially the last blur/sharpen example. This shows what sets magazine photos apart from the average person’s. Thanks David.
Thnks for a little tutorial
Thanks, I’m an old dog at Photoshop a I just learned a new trick from your site. Me like-y the Spot Healing Brush. I’ve alway used Healing and Clone Stamp and never messed with the newer brush. This old dog just learned a new trick.
Another nice tut.
Just waiting to get off work, so I can
re-read these last few tuts i’ve read
through, so I can try them out myself.
Keep up the good, thorough explanations!
Hi David i like your tutorials, ive read a couple and found out a lot of new things….and theyre all pretty easy to understand! you’re smart
how do u use the red eye tool?? ive never needed it, and i just realized i dont know how to use it!
Hi I’m a beginner and had tried to learn photoshop before and gave up because I could really understand the ins and outs of it. However I’ve just come across your site and I’m hooked up again. Any chance of inlcuding more practical examples similar to the one in “Working with Layers”.
Once again thanks and really appreciate what you’re doing sharing your knowledge with us…
I just discovered your site through Google Reader today, and I am so glad I did! I’ve been teaching myself Photoshop, and your tutorials have made learning a lot easier (and fun too!).