ABSTRACT
Healing brush strategies Those of you who have not used versions of Photoshop prior to version 7 must forgive us for thinking that the healing brush is a magical wonder, but it can’t do everything. The clone stamp tool still has its uses, as does copying and pasting pixels. When to use what can be tricky – healing is best done away from strong contrast perimeters and where texture needs to be preserved (or added to). It’s best used at full opacity and with a hard brush (just about the opposite of the clone stamp tool). Sometimes you need to seed an area with pixels before the healing brush can be made to work, other times it’s better to use the patch tool where you can make an accurate selection prior to using the tool. Sometimes it is easier to simply grab pixels from some other source and blend them in. Figure 4.1 shows my Harley shot in the studio. There are issues: too narrow a background, wrinkles and a foreshortened foreground due to needing a front fi ll card. Figure 4.2 shows how the healing brush as well as the patch tool were used to fi x these background issues. The Layers panel shows the addition of a pasted layer from a separate image shot on the same background. There are additional layers for tone adjustment and a fi x for the Harley logo. The fi nal retouched image is shown in Figure 4.3.
