Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual

Zapping Shines and Shadows

Shiny spots, (or hot spots, as some folks call them) are truly evil. They can ruin a perfectly good photo by making your subject look like a big ol' sweat ball. That's okay if the person just finished a marathon—glistening is expected then—but not if she's sitting for a portrait. Fortunately, the Clone Stamp tool can get rid of shiny spots and unsightly shadows in a hurry. It works by copying pixels from one area of an image to another (see Figure 10-7).

Tip

Be careful not to erase all the shine and all the shadows in your images; you want to leave a little bit hanging around so the photo looks real. The goal is to remove just enough shine and shadows that viewers aren't distracted by them.

Here's how to reduce shine and shadows with the Clone Stamp tool:

1. Open your photo and create a new layer and name it Shine.

   Click the "Create a new layer" button at the bottom of your Layers panel, give the layer a name in the resulting dialog box, and then click OK. Make sure this layer is above the image layer you want to fix. By doing your skin-fixing on another layer, you're protecting the original image and giving yourself the option of reducing the strength of the fix by reducing the layer's opacity.

2. Grab the Clone Stamp tool from the Tools panel.

   Press S to activate this tool, which looks like a rubber stamp (in fact, it used to be called the Rubber Stamp tool).

3. In the Options bar, choose a soft-edged brush and change the blend mode to Darken.

   Choosing Darken from the ...