Digital Bandaging with the Healing Brush Tool

The Healing Brush and Patch tools are similar to the Clone Stamp tool. They let you clone pixels from one area and apply them to another area. But that’s where the healing tools leave the Clone Stamp tool eating their dust. The Clone Stamp tool used to be one of the main tools for retouching flawed or blemished areas. But the problem was that if you weren’t careful, you could end up with telltale blotches and smudged areas that were a sure giveaway that some retouching had occurred. That’s because the Clone Stamp tool just takes the pixels from the sampled area and copies them over the flaw. There is no consideration for the tonality of the flawed area — the shadows, midtones, and highlights. So if the pixels you are sampling from aren’t shaded and lit exactly like the ones you’re covering, you have a mismatch in color. This makes creating repairs that are seamless and indecipherable to the eye hard.

That is, until the Healing Brush tool arrived. This very intelligent tool clones by using the texture from the sampled area (the source) and then using the colors around the brush stroke as you paint over the flawed area (the destination). The highlights, midtones, and shadows remain intact, and the result of the repair is more realistic and natural — not retouched and phony. To use the Healing Brush tool, select the tool that looks like a bandage. Choose your options, such as brush size. Specify your Source option — Sampled or Pattern. For most retouching jobs, Sampled will be the option of choice. Select the Aligned option. This allows your sampling point to move in relation to your mouse movement. Establish the sampling point by Alt+clicking (Option+clicking on the Mac) the part of your image you want to clone from. Release the Alt (Option on the Mac) key and click or drag on the flawed area.

Resurfacing Wrinkles and Sags
While wrinkles, scars, bags, sags, and other less than desirable facial imperfections were once the domain of the Airbrush and Clone Stamp tools, the flaws are now fair game for the awesome Healing Brush tool. The Healing Brush tool is a much more effective flaw-fixing tool due to its ability to preserve the various tones of an image. Here are the steps to heal your favorite, but imperfect photo:
1. Open your image and select the Healing Brush tool.
Use the J key to select it from the keyboard. Note that you can also heal between two images. Just make sure that they have the same color mode.
2. In the Options bar, click the Brush Preset picker.
In the drop-down palette, select your desired diameter and hardness for your brush tip. You do this several times while retouching your image. It is important to use the appropriate brush size for the flaw you are repairing.
3. Leave the blend mode set to Normal.
You can change your blend mode if necessary. For most simple retouching jobs, such as this one, you’ll probably leave it at Normal.
4. Choose a Source option.
You have a choice between Sampled and Pattern.
- Sampled, which you will probably use 99 percent of the time, uses the pixels from the image.
- Regarding Pattern, well, you can probably infer that it uses pixels from a pattern you have selected from the Pattern picker dropdown palette.
For my example, I am sticking with Sampled because I don’t think my guy would look that good with a Tie-Dye or Nebula pattern across his face. He’s just way too corporate for that.
5. Select how you want to align the sampled pixels.
When you click or drag with the Healing Brush tool, Photoshop displays a crosshair along with the Healing Brush cursor. The crosshair represents the sampling point, also known as the source. As you move the Healing Brush tool, the crosshair also moves, providing a constant reference to the area that you are sampling. However, if you deselect the Aligned option in the Options bar, Photoshop applies the source pixels from your initial sampling point, despite how many times you stop and start dragging. I left Aligned selected in my example.
6. Establish the sampling point by Alt+clicking (Option+clicking on the Mac). Make sure to click the area of your image you want to clone from.
In my example, I clicked the smooth area on the chin and portions of the forehead.
7. Release the Alt (Option on the Mac) key and click or drag over the area of your image that contains the flaw.
Pay attention to where the crosshair is located because that’s the area you are sampling from. In my example, I brushed over the wrinkles under and around the eyes and on the forehead. I also zapped some dark spots here and there. In just five or ten minutes, this gentleman lost about ten years. Save the file, close it, and send in your invoice for your digital dermabrasion.