Healing brush tracks?

[Kimbrly86]

I've been working on a photo with water damage for a friend. I think I got a little "happy" with the spot healing brush and spot healing brush tool. When I step back from this photo I'm seeing light and dark spots and don't know how to address them:-(

Any suggestions would be great!

[Kraellin]

not sure i see the exact thing you're referring to here. the image is very grainy/noisy, but not sure that's what you're meaning. the healing brush is one of the clone type brushes, though and it's very easy to overdo a portion you're working on. by overdo, i mean simply that one is trying to do too much at one time. any type of clone action needs to be done is fairly small, and fairly translucent steps so as not to be too obvious. most of my cloning is dont at 40% opacity or lower and usually with a relatively very small brush. i also overlap a certain point by taking data from more than one point. in other words, if i'm working on a given spot i'll often clone from a spot above it, to one side or the other or below it, blending all this into the target area. cloning is very easy to overdo, so take it in small increments and blend it in from multiple areas.

and as for the noise in this image, use a noise reducer, either photoshop's own or something like neat image or noise ninja.

oh, and welcome to RP

[Kimbrly86]

Thank you for your input and advice. Yes...the photo was too noisy and I ran it through Neat image (which softened the photo too much) did the repair over with the healing brushes and then added a little grain back to the photo because I thought that helped some of the uneven fading. When I looked closely at the photo and compared it with the original, I think what I was noticing was the uneven fading of the photo, especially towards the bottom. I think my second time around was a little better:-)

Kim