465 CHAPTER Using Cloning and Healing to Restore Digital Images IN THIS CHAPTER The Healing Brush tools Content Aware fill The Clone Stamp Advanced cloning techniques E ven the best photos can have common problems that keep them from being perfect: dust and scratches, unsightly backgrounds, or just the presence of an ex-boyfriend. Even the most beautiful photo models can have blemishes, bulges, or cellulite. Family pictures are only as good as the family member talking or the person with his eyes closed. The Healing Brush tools and the Clone Stamp are designed to correct these problems and make bad photos good and good photos great. You can use these tools to create artistic effects as well, adding elements to your photos that wouldn’t normally be there and blending images together seamlessly. I show you how these tools work in depth, and before you know it, your ex will be history. The Healing Brush Tools I wish I had a Healing Brush that worked in real life. From acne to carpet stains, my life would sure be much easier. The idea behind the Healing Brushes is to take a flaw—such as acne, lens spots, or even unknown peo- ple—and remove it by covering it with a patch made by subtly copying and blending the surrounding areas of the image. The Healing Brushes blend the pixel information of the sampled area with the lighting, texture, and trans- parency information of the target area, so the finished product is an area that blends better than a straight clone. This is especially useful for areas that are similar but consist of many different tones, like a face. The Spot Healing Brush works automatically, choosing which areas to blend. The Healing Brush tool allows you to choose which area is used to create the patch, and you can use the Patch tool to create a selection around the targeted 22_584743-ch15.indd 46522_584743-ch15.indd 465 5/3/10 10:36 AM5/3/10 10:36 AM Part IV: Enhancing, Correcting, and Retouching 466 area and preview the resulting fix. The Red Eye tool doesn’t really fit in with the description of the Healing Brushes, because the patch it creates is just dark pixels, but it is a fast fix for a common photographic problem, so it is grouped in the Toolbox with the Healing Brushes. Access the Healing Brushes, the Patch tool, and the Red Eye tool by clicking and holding the trian- gle at the bottom of the Toolbox icon, as shown in Figure 15.1, or by typing J (Shift+J to toggle through the tools). FIGURE 15.1 The Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush, the Patch tool, and the Red Eye tool are all found together in the Toolbox. The Spot Healing Brush Sometimes I wonder if Adobe didn’t feel like they acted too soon when they named the Magic Wand. The Quick Selection tool is definitely more magical, and the Spot Healing Brush makes things disappear faster than you can say “abracadabra!” The Spot Healing Brush is primarily used for targeting small blemishes or spots that are surrounded by areas free of defect. Because it doesn’t allow you to manually set a sample area, it’s a hit-and-miss tool. When it works, it’s a one-click-wonder, and when it doesn’t, the results are usually extremely bruised and smudged pixels. Thank goodness for the Undo option and the History panel! You can change options to determine how the Spot Healing Brush works by setting the Type Option in the options bar, as shown in Figure 15.2. The options are Proximity Match, Create Texture, and Content Aware. FIGURE 15.2 The options bar for the Spot Healing Brush Proximity Match The Spot Healing Brush, when set to its default option of Proximity Match, uses the areas in or around the targeted area to replace the target area. If these areas aren’t consistent with what you want your end result to be, you can end up with a very interesting patch. 22_584743-ch15.indd 46622_584743-ch15.indd 466 5/3/10 10:36 AM5/3/10 10:36 AM Chapter 15: Using Cloning and Healing to Restore Digital Images 467 To show you what I mean, look at Figure 15.3. Cleaning the spots off this boy’s nose by just click- ing them with the Spot Healing Brush is easy, and presto—they disappear! Try that with the spots around his mouth, however, and you can see in the second photo that he starts to acquire an extra body part. Create Texture In areas that are surrounded by variance like this, you can use the pixels inside of the targeted area by choosing the Create Texture option to create the patch with the pixels inside of the targeted area instead of the areas outside of it. The third photo in Figure 15.3 shows the end result using this option, and it looks much better. FIGURE 15.3 Using the Proximity Match option works great in areas that are consistent, but the Create Texture option is better in areas of variance. A face in serious need of clean-up! Using the Proximity Match option Using the Create Texture option Content-Aware The Content-Aware option is new in Photoshop CS5 and actually samples multiple areas to create a patch that matches a background with distinctly different areas. Although it doesn’t work with body parts very well, it seems to do a fair job with rough borders, such as the one created by the surf in Figure 15.4. You can see that the ocean and the sand were not only cloned to create the new patch, but cloned in a way that they lined up with the rest of the photo. Using the Spot Healing Brush is as simple as using the cursor to paint over the area you want to remove from your image. Photoshop then creates a blended patch based on the options you select to cover the targeted blemish. On the Web Site You can find the photos shown throughout this section saved as Figure 15-3, Figure 15-4, and Figure 15-5 on the Web site. Use Figure 15-5 to follow along with the exercise. n 22_584743-ch15.indd 46722_584743-ch15.indd 467 5/3/10 10:36 AM5/3/10 10:36 AM Part IV: Enhancing, Correcting, and Retouching 468 FIGURE 15.4 The new Content-Aware option makes easy work of taking objects out of a variegated background. Follow these steps to use the Spot Healing Brush to correct a spot or blemish in an image: 1. Open an image that has one or more spots that need correcting. Figure 15.5 is a great photo, but there is a fly in the boy’s hair. Zoom closer to the blem- ish if you want a better view. 2. Click the Spot Healing Brush to select it. 3. Change the brush size to slightly larger than the area you want healed. Note If your blemished area is elongated, you can use a smaller brush size, but you must cover the blemish in one stroke by holding down the left mouse button and dragging to mark the entire blemish before releasing it so the blemish outside the stroke isn’t used to heal the area inside the stroke. n 4. Choose a healing mode from the Mode drop-down list in the options bar. The Normal healing mode creates the blended patch that I described to you. The Replace mode works like the Clone Stamp to actually replace the selected area by copying and pasting the source exactly how it appears, not blending the pixels at all. This option is rarely a good idea with the Spot Healing Brush because you don’t get to pick the replace- ment pixels. The other modes correspond to the blending modes and create lighter or darker versions of the patch. 22_584743-ch15.indd 46822_584743-ch15.indd 468 5/3/10 10:36 AM5/3/10 10:36 AM Chapter 15: Using Cloning and Healing to Restore Digital Images 469 5. Choose a Type of correction from the options bar. For the photo in Figure 15.5, I selected Proximity Match because I want the color and texture of the surrounding hair to become the patch. FIGURE 15.5 There’s a fly in this boy’s hair that distracts from the beauty of this photo. 6. Choose Sample All Layers if you are using a second, empty layer, as shown in Figure 15.6, to make the healing changes. Tip Using a second layer to create changes on is always an excellent idea. It gives you a canvas to work with and erase changes from as well as leaving your original image unchanged. n 7. Click the blemish with the Spot Healing Brush, as shown in Figure 15.7. You can click and drag if needed to cover the entire blemish. Photoshop processes the patch and places it. If you used the Content Aware option, this might take some time. Your results may or may not be satisfactory. Continue with the fol- lowing steps to see how the Spot Healing brush works differently each time it is used. 22_584743-ch15.indd 46922_584743-ch15.indd 469 5/3/10 10:36 AM5/3/10 10:36 AM Part IV: Enhancing, Correcting, and Retouching 470 FIGURE 15.6 Don’t forget to choose Sample All Layers if you are making non-destructive edits to a second, blank layer. FIGURE 15.7 When using the Spot Healing Brush, be sure to cover the entire blemish with one pass. 22_584743-ch15.indd 47022_584743-ch15.indd 470 5/3/10 10:36 AM5/3/10 10:36 AM Chapter 15: Using Cloning and Healing to Restore Digital Images 471 8. Undo and then use the Spot Healing Brush several times over and over to see sev- eral different results. You probably see a different result every time. In other words, if at first you don’t succeed…. 9. Make a second pass and even more if necessary. Sometimes making two or three passes cleans up edges left by the initial pass. If the Spot Healing Brush worked, you should get results similar to Figure 15.8. FIGURE 15.8 When the Spot Healing Brush works, it’s almost impossible to tell that your image ever had a blemish. If you don’t get the results that you want, you can move on to the more advanced tools. The Healing Brush The Healing Brush tool works very similarly to the Spot Healing Brush tool, with the added feature that you get to set the sample point—choose the area where the fix comes from. For instance, Figure 15.9 could be a fantastic silhouette if the light poles in the background could be removed. As I patch over the areas where the light poles are, I want the patched areas of the sky to follow the gradient created by the setting sun rather than having the splotchy fix that would be created by the Spot Healing Brush. The Clone Stamp also would leave splotchy, unblended areas. The Healing Brush is the perfect tool. 22_584743-ch15.indd 47122_584743-ch15.indd 471 5/3/10 10:36 AM5/3/10 10:36 AM . starts to acquire an extra body part. Create Texture In areas that are surrounded by variance like this, you can use the pixels inside of the targeted area by choosing the Create Texture option. option is new in Photoshop CS5 and actually samples multiple areas to create a patch that matches a background with distinctly different areas. Although it doesn’t work with body parts very well,. Brushes, the Patch tool, and the Red Eye tool by clicking and holding the trian- gle at the bottom of the Toolbox icon, as shown in Figure 15.1, or by typing J (Shift+J to toggle through the tools).