Photo Restoration - - Star-pattern mystery

brock-1 · #1 03-11-2006, 11:54 PM

Here's one that has me stumped and I'm hoping the collective wisdom here can help.

I picked up a very cool trick when using the healing brush from one of Scott Kelby's books. The trick is to first narrow the brush and then to angle it at something like -49 degrees.

This, in turn, renders a kind of star pattern when the healing brush is used. It's almost as if the brush were "tumbling" over your image. Teh result is that the "healing" looks much more natural because it's randomizing the pattern it lays down.

All well and good; I used it all the time under PSCS. But now that I have PSCS2, I CANNOT get the healing brush to perform as above, even though I have ALL the settings the same.

I even went to a computer store, booted up their Mac (I'm using a G5, dual processor) and ran PSCS2 and tried to get that machine's healing brush to work as before, no dice. So I know it's not specific to my machine.

Any help??

Thanks -- Brock

mistermonday · #2 03-12-2006, 12:26 AM

Brock, be sure that you are not using the Sot Healing brush. Adobe added this to CS2 and it now is the 1st tool under the healing brush. It works differently (no sampling, no dynamics other than size and hardness). The previous healing brush is now the 2nd tool down on the flyout when you click on that tool.
Regards, Murray

brock-1 · #3 03-12-2006, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mistermonday

Brock, be sure that you are not using the Sot Healing brush. Adobe added this to CS2 and it now is the 1st tool under the healing brush. It works differently (no sampling, no dynamics other than size and hardness). The previous healing brush is now the 2nd tool down on the flyout when you click on that tool.
Regards, Murray

Yep, I am using the previous healing brush, not the new "spot" healing brush introduced with PSCS2.

Is anyone else able to get this "star pattern" from an angled healing brush while using PSCS2? If so, then perhaps there's something really messed up with my set up. But as I said, I'm not able to produce the star pattern even when using a fresh install of PSCS2 on a machine at the computer store.

Doug Nelson · #4 03-12-2006, 09:35 AM

What's your Angle Jitter set to? You'll need a strong jitter or you'll just get a single angle.

brock-1 · #5 03-12-2006, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

What's your Angle Jitter set to? You'll need a strong jitter or you'll just get a single angle.

Well, that was a great thought... but still does not work.

Indeed, my angle jitter was set to 0. So I set it to 100 and nothing.

In fact, I then booted up PSCS to check what my setting were and duplicated them under PSCS2, again, nothing worked. I'm still just getting a single (angled) line when using the healing brush.

Also, you know you can only set those brush controls for a brush; the "healing" brush doesn't count apparently because you can't get to the angle jitter controls if the healing brush is selected.

Doug Nelson · #6 03-12-2006, 07:40 PM

You might want to ask over at Kelby's forum. Don't forget to report the answer back here, I'm curious.

Not for nuthin', but that technique strikes me as a bit counter to the whole point of the healing brush. It's hard enough to control as it is. I want the hardest, most distinct brush I can for that.

brock-1 · #7 03-12-2006, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

You might want to ask over at Kelby's forum. Don't forget to report the answer back here, I'm curious.

Not for nuthin', but that technique strikes me as a bit counter to the whole point of the healing brush. It's hard enough to control as it is. I want the hardest, most distinct brush I can for that.

Well, you'll have to tell me where Kelby's forum is and I'll try it.

The brush is hard to control but the technique really provides a randomness that helps the healing brush blend in much nicer than it does all on its own. For as good as the healing brush is, you can still see an outline of where it's work was done. I use this "stumbling" technique on skin almost exclusively (I jump into PSCS, do the skin retouching, save as layered TIFF and then jump into PSCS 2 to finish things off.)

If other's here wouldn't mind trying this on their PSCS 2 just and report back to see if they're getting the tumbling effect or not I'd appreciate it.