Retouch and Healing Tools
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!
101 Comments
interesting tips. thanks
Flag as inappropriateAlthough I am a 76 year old pensioner I am nevertheless new to Photoshop. I have taken a photo of a beautiful snow covered lane which I want to put a person in wearing a red coat. What is the easiest/simpleness way to do it without it looking false? Any help/advice would be much appreciated.
Flag as inappropriateis there a way i can download spot healing brush for free? what site??
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Flag as inappropriatebrilliant workshop, can I just say that it would be really useful to always have the icon of the tool you are talking about next to the name – found it a bt confusng in the healing tools section.
Thanks
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Flag as inappropriateI must say I rarely use the healing brush tool. I know I should, but I find the clone stamp tool used with a soft brush seems to work for everything I need. Nice article! Your site is very clean and organized. I just bookmarked it.
Flag as inappropriateDear Sir, Mr. David Leggett , Relay very helpful & interesting, informative, and easy to learn your all tutorials. thanks,Rana M. Asif Sultan, From Saudi Arabia
Flag as inappropriateWow really a great tutorial man! you really are awesome!
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Flag as inappropriatehi, im a newbie to this and was wondering how your blur/sharpen certain areas of your picture?? when i use the blur filter the whole image blurs. thanks
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Thanks so much for this great info. Being a new user to photoshop, I really appreciate the easy to understand tutorials and have learned heaps in next to no time.
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Flag as inappropriateIncredible… I found out something new in this tut. I never understood until now how spot healing brush works and I never knew you can use patch tool with any selection. Thank you very much.
Flag as inappropriateI 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!).
Flag as inappropriateHi 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”.
Flag as inappropriateOnce again thanks and really appreciate what you’re doing sharing your knowledge with us…
how do u use the red eye tool?? ive never needed it, and i just realized i dont know how to use it!
Flag as inappropriateHi 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 :P
Flag as inappropriateAnother 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!
Flag as inappropriateThanks, 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.
Flag as inappropriateThnks for a little tutorial
Flag as inappropriateBrilliant. Especially the last blur/sharpen example. This shows what sets magazine photos apart from the average person’s. Thanks David.
Flag as inappropriateReally good job. Rollovers are nice too.
Flag as inappropriate@ 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!
Flag as inappropriateI just used this tutorial a bit and wanted to show some results..
http://blog.matthewkammerer.com/2008/05/18/some-basic-photoshop-touch-ups/
Flag as inappropriateThis 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
Flag as inappropriateNIce site
Flag as inappropriateAwesome, I cant wait. Tutorial9 has some of the best tuts on the web, better written on average then any else I could find.
Flag as inappropriateThanks 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.
Flag as inappropriateVery well explained David. You should definitely use those rollover examples more often. They help show what you mean very well.
Keep it up man!
Flag as inappropriateIt is a very good tutorial, but I wish Tut9 will start offering some more advanced stuff soon.
Flag as inappropriateNow 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.
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