Hey, everyone!
Welcome to the Photoshop Training Channel.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use the Spot Healing Brush Tool with
Content-Aware to quickly remove blemishes and other imperfections in your photos.
The Spot Healing Brush Tool is often used in portrait photography and that’s what
we’re going to focus on in this tutorial.
But, I’m also going to show you how you could use it in different types of photos.
So, first of all, select the Spot Healing Brush Tool, which is here on the Tools Bar
or you can press J on the keyboard to enable it.
Once you select the Spot Healing Brush Tool, make sure the Type is Content-Aware.
This will make it possible to sample from around the areas that we paint over.
So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to create a New Layer, and I’m just going
to put that right above the portrait.
And with the Spot Healing Brush Tool selected, I’m going to make sure that Sample All Layers
is checked and then, I’m going to remove one of the wrinkles here on his face.
Notice that Photoshop did a pretty good job in removing that wrinkle.
It’s non-destructive.
And this is probably how you have seen this tool being used.
But, this tool is actually more powerful than that.
Let me zoom in just to let you, so you could see what I’m talking about.
So I painted over that wrinkle, and if you saw my last tutorial, on the Patch Tool with
Content-Aware, you saw that I changed the Blending Mode to Lighter colour, you could
also select Lighten and that brings back some of the original texture of the skin.
So notice the before and after.
So the Lighten or the Lighter colour Blending Mode work very similar.
You keep the brightest pixels, whether it’s on the Blend Layer or the Base Layer.
In this case, we’re trying to remove the wrinkle.
The wrinkle is obviously darker, so we’re trying to hide those darker pixels.
And that is what we do by selecting Lighten.
Normal, also brings in some dark pixels that you may or may not want.
So it’s a good idea to work in the Lighten or Lighter colour Blending Mode.
Now, I’m going to zoom out and you’re going to see one thing.
I’m going to disable this layer for now and I’m going to create another layer.
I’m going to go back into the Spot Healing Brush Tool, but this time I’m going to change
the mode from Normal to Lighten.
So we can actually do something very similar by changing the Blending Mode of the tool,
not of the Layer.
So when I paint directly over the wrinkle, I get a similar effect but it’s all in the
tool.
Let me zoom in, so that’s before and after.
Notice that I’m only removing the darker pixels and so you can get a better understanding
of how this works, I’m just going try to remove all the wrinkles here, on this part
of the face.
So I’m going to create yet another blank layer.
The Blending Mode is Normal and I’m going to change the mode to Normal on the Spot Healing
Brush Tool as well.
I still have Content-Aware selected and Sample All Layers checked.
I’m going to increase the size of the brush and I’m just going to, just do a big giant
heal on this area here and notice how Photoshop introduces dark texture that really doesn’t
help this portrait.
I’m going to disable that layer, create one more layer and the only change that I’m
going to make is change the Mode to Lighten.
Once again, the reason we’re selecting Lighten is because we’re trying to remove the darker
pixels which make up the wrinkles.
So I’m going to paint over that same area once again and notice the difference.
So it makes a huge difference when you select Lighten in the Mode to remove the wrinkles
on the image.
I also want to point out that if you select Lighten for the Mode and change the Blending
Mode from Normal to Darken, which is the opposite, they cancel each other out and this layer
essentially becomes invisible.
And if I change it to Lighten, it’s basically the same as Normal.
Notice that there is no difference when I switch between them.
So usually I like to leave the Layer at Normal and change the Mode to either Lighten or Darker
depending on what type of blemishes I’m trying to remove.
In this case, I’m removing wrinkles and some of these blemishes are dark.
So one way that you can think about it is like this, if the blemish is darker than the
skin colour then choose Lighten.
If the blemish is brighter than the skin colour, choose Darken.
In this case, all these wrinkles and a lot of these blemishes are darker than the skin
tones, so, we need to choose Lighten and we can continue painting.
So I’m just going to disable this layer and start from scratch.
I’m going to create a New Layer and I’m just going to remove some of these wrinkles
with the Lighten Blending Mode and notice the great job that Photoshop does in removing
a lot of these blemishes and wrinkles, sunspots and things of that sort.
When you’re working with the Spot Healing Brush Tool it’s best to keep short, small
strokes.
You usually don’t want to do big giant strokes.
So just small, little strokes like you saw.
So that’s before and after.
You will notice one thing though, we have this highlight here from the wrinkle, it’s
not very good.
We also have some of that skin right up here that doesn’t go away because that is brighter.
The highlight is brighter.
So the Lighten Mode will not remove it.
So what we need to do is create a New Layer, change it to Darken and we can start removing
some of that skin and see how that works and we’re going to rid of this highlight here.
So that’s before and after.
And I’m going to double tap on the Hand Tool just so that we could see what it looks
like.
And the Spot Healing Brush Tool doesn’t always do that good of a job.
I’m noticing that I’m not really liking that area here, so I can either bring down
the opacity or just give it another swipe.
Every time we give it another pass, it generates different pixels.
The pixels are pretty random.
And also, just to show you how powerful this tool is, I’m going to create another layer
and I’m going to change it to Lighten and I’m just going to paint over the eyes so
we can get rid of the entire eye.
And I can start painting again in the areas that Photoshop didn’t do that good of a
job and notice that pretty soon we’re going to get something that looks fairly convincing,
just by quickly painting over this area.
Anyway, this is just an example of how powerful Content-Aware fill technology is.
You saw that we removed that eye fairly quickly and it’s look pretty convincing.
Obviously, we have some issues but you get the idea.
Another reason why you should consider using this technique is if you’re working with
an image that has a lot of detail, that it’s either too dark or to bright that you don’t
want to get rid of and you want to get rid of the opposite.
So, what I mean by that is, if I zoom in into this area, you’ll see that we have strands
of hair coming out of his forehead but we also have some blemishes.
So, what we could do is remove those blemishes by creating a New Blank Layer, selecting the
Spot Healing Brush Tool, change the Mode to Lighten because we want to keep the lighter
colours and conceal the darker ones.
So, in this case, these darker blemishes.
So when I start painting, you’ll see that we start concealing the blemishes but we don’t
lose the detail of the hair.
So, that’s before and after.
So notice how we’ereremoving all of blemishes right in between the hair and we don’t actually
lose the detail of those strands of hair.
So, I really think this technique is really powerful and you should use it when retouching
your photos.
And, once again, to reiterate, if the blemishes is darker than the skin tone, use the Mode
Lighten.
If the blemish we’re trying to remove is brighter than the skin tone, then use the
Darken Mode.
And I’m going to enable this hot air balloon layer just to show you that you could use
this tool to remove unwanted items in an image.
In this case, if we wanted to remove one of these hot air balloons, we could simply select
the Spot Healing Brush Tool, change the Mode to Normal, make sure that you’re in Content-Aware,
Sample All Layers, create a New Layer to always work non-destructively.
And I’m going to increase the size of my brush by tapping on the right bracket key
on the keyboard.
Painting over that balloon and Photoshop automatically removes it.
The same thing will be true if we were trying to remove this car from the street.
So, I’m going to create a New Layer right above that and I’m going to just paint directly
over it.
Notice that Photoshop does a really good job in removing these unwanted elements.
I missed a spot there so I’m just going to tap and it will remove it.
Once again, don’t forget that this tutorial is part of my Content-Aware series on my YouTube
Channel.
I have a playlist with tutorials that all deal with Content-Aware and the different
tools that it is available in.
You can find the link to that playlist right below this video.
Let me know in the comment below if these techniques were new to you.
And if they are, are you going to start using them in your workflow?
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Thank you so much for watching and I’ll talk to you again soon.