Can anyone help? I have a photo of a woman with veins on her hands. What techniques are best to use to minimize the look of the veins. I tried the healing brush and clone tool, but it looked to fake.

Thanks

It depends on how you're using the tools! I use healing brush to fix veins most of the time. If you're using it right and still not getting good results, or if you just like doing things the hard way (kidding), you can use a soft light layer and paint over the "shadow" of the vein with a light color and over the "highlights" of the veins with a darker color to even it out.

You spend 20% of the clone stamp tool, to the brushes. Then slowly brush carefully, you will see that you finally want effects.

Another thing to try is the patch tool...select part of the veins, then drag the selection over to another part of skin that's smooth and similar in tone/exposure. I find the patch tool works best in these matters as it helps keep skin detail...like pores. You may want to switch back and forth between the patch tool and cloning.

use lasso tool to mark around the veins and use selective color to take down the color in the veins...haven't tried it myself...but maybe it works :D