Healing Brush

[DJMoore5]

Hi, I am a photo retoucher and have had some problems using the healing brush...why does the brush sometimes cause dark smudges to appear on the part you are trying to "heal"?
Diana

[0lBaldy]

Diana, , welcome to RetouchPro. Have a look around and enjoy. Nice to have you onboard.

The healing brush tries to blend with the surrounding areas, if there is something dark or light nearby then it will pick up those colors and try to blend them in with whatever you are brushing with..

To help alleviate this problem .. if there is a dark or bright area near where you want to use the healing brush... Use a selection tool and make a selection of the area you want to heal, avoiding the dark or light areas... feather the selection a bit then use the healing brush... the selection will limit what the brush sees and will not use anything outside the selection to try to blend with

[DJMoore5]

Thanks! I appreciate it.
Diana

[DJMoore5]

Thank you!
Diana

[Dave.Cox]

Hi Diana,

OlBaldy's comments are correct. Maybe this additional information will help you to become more familiar with the heal tool.

The healing brush is a great tool, but requires a bit of understanding to use properly. It picks up an area to heal from much like the clone tool, but when you click to heal it blends the source with the current image. If you try to blend over an area where there is a sharp contrast change, it can often give you a smudge as it trys to blend the differences.

The key to getting this to work, is be very careful to match your patterns. If you are trying to heal an area where there is a sharp contrast change, try to use a source where the pattern is similar, and the contrast ship is the same.

For example If you were to heal spot B in my example, you want to sample from spot A before you heal. If you sample from spot C or spot D, you will get the smudges that you noticed. That is because one side is always going to have a sharp contrast. It is also important to heal as closely as possible from the source pattern to the destination pattern, or you may see the line shift slightly. If this happens, press Ctrl or Cmd Z to undo, and try again. Of course, if you have CS4, you can just watch the heal pattern as you heal with the new heal brush tool

I hope this helps all you like to use the heal tool.

Dave.

[DJMoore5]

Thank you very much! I appreciate it...
Diana