Saturday School: Christmas Edition

Hi Everyone! It's Jenn (jk703) here for a Christmas edition of Saturday School! First, everyone one here at Jennifer Fox Designs would like to wish you and you a very Merry Christmas! I hope that you are enjoying the gifts, family, friends, and food that is all about! 

So, with all that food around, I am sure that there are photos of friends, kids, or even you with food on your face! Well, today I am going to touch on the Healing Tool and we can remove those food spots, as well as cuts, acne or even lighten skin! Such a cool tool, and my best friend if I have a blemish on my face! OK! Here is the Tool (such a cute little bandaid, right?!): 

Here is a picture of my son, Shayne, eating a pretzel with mustard when we visited Touch a Truck day earlier this year! Now, I know you are thinking... where is the mustard... it is there, and it bothered me, so this was a great example of removing the "food blemish!" lol! 

This close up shows that it is there, and it is actually in a few places: left corner, left spot on his cheek, right bottom smudge, and there is a small cut on his nose and cheek. He's my cute slob! :)

The healing brush is used remove blemishes. It gathers information from the immediate surrounding area that we are altering and then it will blend it to make the changes smooth and very unnoticeable - if done correctly.

To make things more beneficial, we need to use the right kind of brush. If you have the brush set at a high hardness, the changes that you make will show. I normally use a hardness and spacing of 20%, the size will change as you work so there is not a set size for this. Please know, it will take time to experiment with these settings, these are just what I find most effective. For this example, I adjusted my hardness a bit higher. 

You may notice that my brush size is pretty small. When fixing blemishes, you will want to zoom in pretty close to make the best changes. The small brush size is effective at that level of closeness.

This is the Healing Brush Tool menu bar:

Mode Specifies the blending mode. Choose Replace to preserve noise, film grain, and texture at the edges of the brush stroke when using a soft‑edge brush.

Proximity Match Uses pixels around the edge of the selection to find an area to use as a patch.

Create Texture Uses pixels in the selection to create a texture. If the texture doesn’t work, try dragging through the area a second time.

Content-Aware Compares nearby image content to seamlessly fill the selection, realistically maintaining key details such as shadows and object edges.


This is the Spot Healing Brush Tool menu bar:

Mode Specifies the blending mode. Choose Replace to preserve noise, film grain, and texture at the edges of the brush stroke when using a soft‑edge brush.

Source Specifies the source to use for repairing pixels. Sampled to use pixels from the current image, or Pattern to use pixels from a pattern. If you chose Pattern, select a pattern from the Pattern pop‑up panel.

Aligned Samples pixels continuously, without losing the current sampling point, even if you release the mouse button. Deselect Aligned to continue to use the sampled pixels from the initial sampling point each time you stop and resume painting.

Sample Samples data from the layers you specify. To sample from the active layer and visible layers below it, choose Current And Below. To sample only from the active layer, choose Current Layer. To sample from all visible layers, choose All Layers. To sample from all visible layers except adjustment layers, choose All Layers and click the Ignore Adjustment Layers icon to the right of the Sample pop‑up menu.

Removing Blemishes
So, here are some steps to removing blemishes and other unwanted marks on your photos!

Open up your photo, and create a duplicate of the original so that if you don't like the changes, you still have the original to go back to!

1. Choose the Healing Tool, and note that the Background layer should be the active layer. 
2. Zoom in close to the area that you will be working on. 
3. Move your cursor NEXT to the blemish, to a nearby "Clean" location. 
4. Press the Alt Key (Option for Mac) and hold it. Click with your left mouse button. You will see something similar to a bullseye when you do this part. You now have a made a sample that you will use to cover the blemish.
5. Next, you start clicking on the blemish to change/fix it. 
6. Re-sample often and near to the blemish -- it will appear smooth, and doesn't look blotchy when you continue to re-sample. 
7. Sometimes, changing the opacity helps in making the changes seem more realistic. 

For this example, I left my tool in the Normal mode. If it was a dark spot, I might choose lighten, or if it were a light spot, I might choose darken. Play around with the options, and find your style!

Here is the Before and After of my Mustard Mouth! 

There you have it... a quick and easy blemish fix! I hope you learned something, and I would  LOVE to see what you were able to remove from your photos!  

Enjoy your holidays, and have a great week! Till next time!

Jenn

(jk703)