Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual

The Great Healers

Some of the simplest retouching you can do is to remove dark circles and bags under eyes, as well as other blemishes. In the old days, you were stuck with cloning (copying) skin from one area to another, which never really looked quite right; texture and tonal (color) differences always made the fix stick out like a sore thumb. These days, Photoshop has a set of tools specifically for retouching skin. Instead of grafting skin by cloning, these tools blend two patches of skin together so the texture and tones actually match (see Figure 11-1).

Figure 11-1. Top: Photoshop’s magical healing tools, including the Content-Aware Move tool (discussed on page 443). Bottom: A lot of moles—and an eyebrow ring—have completely disappeared from this guy’s face. With a few clicks here and a few drags there, you can clean up a photo without making it look obviously retouched. Some of the guy’s lighter freckles are still hanging around, and the bags under his eyes aren’t completely gone; they’re just lightened so they’re not distracting.

Note

The first few tools covered in this section—the Spot Healing Brush, Healing Brush, and Patch tools—live in the same toolset. Press J to activate the tool you used last, or press Shift-J repeatedly to cycle through the toolset until you get to the right one.

The Spot Healing Brush

This tool’s cursor is a round brush—perfect for fixing round problem ...