How does healing brush work

Specifies the source to use for repairing pixels. Sampled to use pixels from the current image, or Pattern to use pixels from a pattern. Controls how quickly the pasted region adapts to the surrounding image. Select a lower value for images with grain or fine details, or a higher value for smooth images. If you are sampling from one image and applying to another, both images must be in the same color mode unless one of the images is in Grayscale mode.

If there is a strong contrast at the edges of the area you want to heal, make a selection before you use the Healing Brush tool. The selection should be bigger than the area you want to heal and precisely follow the boundary of contrasting pixels. When you paint with the Healing Brush tool, the selection prevents colors from bleeding in from the outside.

The Spot Healing Brush tool quickly removes blemishes and other imperfections in your photos. The Spot Healing Brush works similarly to the Healing Brush: it paints with sampled pixels from an image or pattern and matches the texture, lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled pixels to the pixels being healed.

The Spot Healing Brush automatically samples from around the retouched area. For retouching a large area or for more control over the source sampling, you can use the Healing Brush instead of the Spot Healing Brush. Proximity Match. Create Texture. Uses pixels in the selection to create a texture. Compares nearby image content to seamlessly fill the selection, realistically maintaining key details such as shadows and object edges.

See Content-aware, pattern, or history fills. The Patch tool lets you repair a selected area with pixels from another area or a pattern. Like the Healing Brush tool, the Patch tool matches the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels.

You can also use the Patch tool to clone isolated areas of an image. The Transparent option works best for solid or gradient backgrounds with clearly distinct textures such as a bird in a blue sky. To control how quickly the pasted region adapts to the surrounding image, adjust the Diffusion slider. Darken Amount. Buy Adobe Photoshop or start a Free Trial. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. Buy now. Retouch and repair photos Search. Make it.

About the Clone Source panel. Retouch with the Clone Stamp tool. Select the Clone Stamp tool. Choose a brush tip and set brush options for the blending mode, opacity, and flow in the options bar. To specify how you want to align the sampled pixels and how to sample data from the layers in your document, set any of the following in the options bar:. Set the sampling point by positioning the pointer in any open image and Alt-clicking Windows or Option-clicking Mac OS.

Optional In the Clone Source panel, click a clone source button and set an additional sampling point. Optional Do any of the following in the Clone Source panel:. To reverse the direction of the source good for mirroring features like eyes , click the Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical buttons. Select Clipped to clip the overlay to the brush size.

Drag over the area of the image you want to correct. Set sample sources for cloning and healing. For this tutorial, I'll be using the Spot Healing Brush to quickly remove some distracting pimples from the girl's face in the photo below, but the technique is the same no matter what it is you're trying to remove or repair as long as the area is small enough for the Spot Healing Brush to be effective.

Here's the photo I'll be working with acne on face photo from Shutterstock :. This tutorial is part of our Portrait Retouching collection. Let's get started! With the photo newly opened in Photoshop, we can see in the Layers panel that we currently have one layer, the Background layer , which holds our image:. Even though our goal is to make the photo look better, we still want to protect the original, so let's add a new blank layer above the Background layer.

We'll do all of our spot healing work on this separate layer. Click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:. Photoshop adds the new blank layer above the Background layer, but by default, it names the layer Layer 1. That doesn't tell us much about what the layer is being used for, so double-click directly on the layer's name in the Layers panel and rename it "spot healing".

It's not uncommon when retouching images to end up with lots of layers, and giving each one a descriptive name makes it easier to keep them organized. Select the Spot Healing Brush from the Tools panel.

You'll find it grouped in with the other healing tools. It is in many ways a lot easier to use than the standard healing brush and extremely effective at removing most blemishes and marks. To see examples of the healing brush and the patch tool in action, check out some of the repairing and retouching tutorials shown in Chapter 8.

The spot healing tool has three basic modes of operation see Figure 1 for the spot healing brush tool Options bar. The Proximity Match mode analyzes the data, around the area where you are painting, to identify the best area to sample the pixel information from. It then uses the pixel data that has been sampled in this way to replace the defective pixels beneath where you are painting.

You can use the spot healing brush in this mode to click away and zap small blemishes, but when you are repairing larger areas in a picture you will usually obtain better results if the brush size used is smaller than the defective area. And because the brush is intelligently looking around for the good pixel data to sample from it is best to apply brush strokes that drag inwards from the side where the best source data exists see Figure 2. Figure 2 In Proximity Match mode, the spot healing brush works by searching automatically to find the best pixels to sample from to carry out a repair.

It is a good idea when using this tool to retouch larger areas, for the brush direction to be coming from the side that contains the most suitable texture to sample from. This will give the spot healing brush a better clue as to which areas to sample. The Create texture mode works in a slightly different fashion. The spot healing tool will read in the data surrounding the area you are attempting to repair. Next along is the Mode drop down and most of these are similar to some of the layer blending modes.

The Normal mode is generally the most predictable in use. The Replace mode is designed for use with soft edged brushes and preserves noise and texture at the edge of brush strokes.

The Healing Brush blends pixels and so you need to select a source before you can start. In the tool options bar, you can see a Source option with radio buttons for Sample and Pattern.

When set to Sample, you hold down the Alt or Option key and click on the image to select the source point. If the Aligned check box is checked, the source point will always remain the same relative distance from the brush as you work. If switched off, every time you make a brush stroke and release, the source point returns to the original position. When set to Pattern, you can then open the Pattern drop down and select a pattern that you can paint onto your photo.