Image Retouching: Tips and Tools for Perfect Edits in Photoshop

Let's talk more about image retouching and removing things that you don't want from images. There are a variety of tools and techniques that depending on your image and the thing that you're working with, there's not just one technique that will always work perfectly every single time. So it's good to have kind of literally different tools in your toolbox for how to handle certain situations.

So let's say this image down here, I want to remove this guy. So I could try to use the spot healing brush and actually before I do anything here, let me just duplicate this layer. When you want to duplicate layers, you can right click and duplicate a layer.

You can drag it to the new icon to duplicate it. But if you want to do it through a keyboard shortcut, you can use this feature here, which has a keyboard shortcut to create a new layer via copy. Now, if you have a selection, it'll only copy and paste basically.

So it kind of copies your selection onto a new layer. But if you don't have a selection, it duplicates the whole layer essentially. Command J on the Mac or Control J on Windows and just think of J as jump a copy to a new layer.

So I can hit Command J or Control J, quickly make a copy and I'll call this my retouching. This is especially good to compare the before and after to make sure that you like what you have done. So I could try using my spot healing brush.

The spot healing brush is better at smaller areas. It's not so great at big areas, but it is quick because you don't decide what gets put there. It looks around the surroundings and says, can I figure this out? And it actually does a pretty good job.

I say pretty good job because there is a little bit of a dimple here, which isn't quite perfect going in that straight line. And that's one thing that I find on a lot of retouching is that when there's a distinct line and you can see the shape of that line, that's kind of a giveaway of not such great retouching. And these kind of automated things where it decides what it puts there, sometimes they can't always decide how to extend a straight line perfectly for you.

I can go in and try to do it again and see if it figures it out. And actually it did a pretty good job this time, but trust me, it does not always work. So let me undo that.

And what do we do when it doesn't work? There are different approaches we can take. For example, there is the Healing Brush. Now with the Healing Brush, this will copy, paste, and then blend an area of your choosing.

So the Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp basically work the same, but the Clone Stamp is a copy and paste. There's no blending step. So if you were to use the Clone Stamp to let's say option click or on Windows, alt click on something to copy it, and then you guys go somewhere else and paint it, it paints it literally exactly like it is.

Which means, undo that, if I let's say sample something that's darker up here by option or alt clicking on it, when I paint it down here, if it does not exactly match, you're gonna notice that. Now, sometimes you don't want the blending and you might like the Clone Stamp. Most of the time though, in a lot of situations, the blending is actually very useful because you want it to match the place you're putting it.

So Spot Healing, you can't decide what is put into an area. The Healing Brush is you do. So with the Healing Brush, I'm still going to option or alt click on something.

And then when I go somewhere else, I can start to paint. And when I paint, it's basically copying and painting, but it's also blending it in to match that area, which is quite nice. So I get to have a say of what it's putting where.

Let me undo. So that is very nice because I could, let's say, sample some of this line, option or alt click on that. Then I can come here and I can line this up, literally.

The only thing is sometimes depending on the angle, it's not quite the right angle. So, and that's something I find with lines is that the lines can move and they can change. They're not always in a straight kind of continuous angle.

So what am I to do when I want to copy a line, but it's not on the right angle? That is what our Clone Source is for. I know it's called the Clone Source. And even though we're using the Healing Brush, it is essentially cloning.

It's copying, painting, but it's just doing the extra blend. But the Clone Source panel can give us options here that aside from just copy and paste, we can have it rotate that Clone Source. So normally when you option or alt click on a thing to say, I want to copy that, when you come over here and I'm gonna go with a bigger brush, I'm gonna use my square bracket keys to make a bigger brush.

When the angle doesn't match, you can come up here and I can literally rotate it. And you can see here how it's rotating it. And so I'm gonna rotate it a lot just so you can really see how it's rotated there.

If I hit the reset button here, that'll reset it back to zero. So here it's not rotated at all. Here if I rotate it the other degrees, right? So now it's rotating the other way.

I don't need to rotate this a lot. And I'm gonna reset it. I'm gonna rotate it a little bit like this.

And I can play with this rotation amount to get the exact amount of rotation that I need for this. Nice. Now, you can also, instead of just playing with this amount, coming back and forth and back and forth here to try to figure out that amount, you can also use some keyboard shortcuts.

So I can put my cursor here where I can see the preview. And then if I'm on the Mac, I can do option shift less than to rotate this way or option shift greater than to shift the other way. It's very subtle because you wanna be able to have control over this.

If I'm on Windows, I'm doing alt shift less than or greater than. And that way I can watch it. I will see the amount there change, but I'm really watching the preview here.

So option shift or on Windows alt shift and then the less than or greater than keys to rotate it. And I can get exactly the right rotation. And then I can actually click to do the painting so that I can custom control the exact rotation that I need.

It's really powerful to be able to do that with this tool. Again, for simple stuff, sometimes you can get away with just a basic spot healing brush, but when you need that extra control, when they're just not cutting it, figuring it out for you, knowing how to use these other tools can get you that final way when the other tools just can't. Just before you're done, make sure that you reset this back to zero just by hitting the reset button there so that this can go back to normal for the future.

Okay, so this image is done. Now let's take a look at a different image here. And I wanna show you a variety of tools that you can try out in different situations.

So let's compare these tools. So the spot healing brush can work nice if you have a little area that has some good surroundings that it can kind of sample from and pull into that area. I'm gonna, before I start retouching, duplicate this current background layer by command J or control J on Windows.

And I'll call this my retouching. I'm gonna zoom in on this area here. And let's say I paint over this area and it does a pretty good job.

Actually, I'm gonna undo that. I'm gonna go with a slightly smaller brush. I don't wanna make so many pixels change.

The original pixels are better quality. And I'm gonna get rid of, let's say that area. And I can hit that area again and it does a pretty good job because it can look around the surrounding areas and figure out what to go there.

When this gets to a bigger area, it doesn't do a very good job. So for little areas, quick, it works. But you try this on a big area with a spot healing brush, it's not so much of a spot anymore.

It's a large thing. And it just does not know what to put into that area. So it doesn't work very well.

That looks horrible. And even if I try to go over it again and again, it's just not gonna work. So I'm gonna undo that and let's try something different.

Now, the spot healing brush decides what it's gonna put there for you and the healing brush, you decide. So that can sometimes work, but you need a big enough area to sample from. Because what happens is when you, let's say option click on something, to the first click, it sets a relationship.

And so from the plus that's moving to the circle, if you don't have a great enough distance as you're doing this here, what's gonna happen is eventually you're gonna get back to that first person. You're gonna restart painting in that first person because look at where the plus is now. It's where that first person was.

So you kind of need a big enough area to sample from. Let me undo. Or when you sample from an area and you start to put this here, you would need to let go.

But the problem is if you haven't fully removed something, it's still doing the blending action. So it still might be blending into that area. So you could let go, sample a different area and try to come back in and get it again.

But you really need a big enough open area to sample from. Try sampling further away. Don't sample too close to your objects if you have enough space.

Undo, I'm gonna go back and let's say I sample from over here further. That will give me enough space. But what if that's not what I want? But at least I can try this and see does this actually work here.

And so if you want to have control over what it's putting into a specific area, then the healing brush can work when you want to control what's there. But you need enough space. So that's an option.

We also have the ability to select an area. And then once we've selected that area, there is a patch tool. Now the patch tool actually, if you wanna make the selection with the patch tool, it normally acts as a lasso.

So if you didn't wanna use another tool, let's say I deselect this, initially the patch tool works like a lasso. Now you can always use any selection tool you want. You are not restricted to the lasso.

But with the patch tool, you're saying, I want to select, let's say in this case, the bad problem, the source of the problem. And then you can drag this to a good area. And the preview is what is nice here.

You get to choose what goes there, but you get to preview it ahead of time. And I think that looks pretty good. So I can let go and it goes back and it uses that.

It's like copy paste blend, but I got to choose what it put there. So that can be very nice. So again, in that situation, you would choose the source of the problem, drag that to a good area that you think belongs there.

Maybe I can go over here. And when you let go, it will blend it into that. And whenever you're getting this blending effect, what you're really looking for is not so much matching the lightness or darkness, you're trying to match a texture.

So it took the texture of this and put it there. So if I undo, for example, if I go up here, notice how flat the texture is, undo. If I go down here, that's a very different texture.

If I undo, if I go over here, that's a more similar, although not exactly the same texture. Let me undo. Maybe I try this over here.

So it's going to take the texture that you put there and it's going to try to blend it into the brightness, the color of the place you're putting it. So that can be useful when you want to preview what it's going to do. Sometimes that can work.

And the idea here is that if one tool doesn't work, I want you to have options for maybe trying other tools. And so if one doesn't work, you can try another. If that doesn't work, you can try another because there are a variety of tools that you can choose from.

Also, if it's easier for you to select an area that you want to fix, the spot healing brush is doing a content aware fill. You can also say, let me fill. Not content aware fill, that's a whole other thing that goes with a much bigger interface and you do have some good control in there.

But if you just want the quick thing, if you say edit fill, that can do a content aware fill, which is basically like you paint brushing over with the spot healing, but you're just using a selection to choose the area rather than painting over that area. Now, one that is a very interesting tool is the remove tool. The remove tool is here underneath the spot healing brush and it is going to have different modes.

So you can turn generative AI off, or you can turn it on where it will definitely use generative AI. So it's using artificial intelligence to make up stuff or you can say auto. So with auto, it will decide whether it needs to use generative AI or not.

And let's just see the difference here. Let's try with it off and see what the remove tool does. So the idea here is that the remove tool is gonna remove things, right? As its name implies.

So let's say we highlight this area and say, I want it to remove this guy. That's kind of a lot like the spot healing brush. So let me turn that off.

Let's use generative AI instead to remove this. So it's gonna use AI, try to figure out what's going to be there, making up stuff and filling that area in, not just simply by looking around at what the surroundings are. Although it does look at that to consider it.

Wow, that is just amazing using AI. So it just made up those pixels, although it did look at its surroundings to try to figure that out, but it made up something basically kind of new. That's phenomenal.

So you could say auto where it just figures out if it needs to use AI or not. If it doesn't need to use AI, it's gonna be faster. If it does use AI, it'll be a little bit slower, but this thing can do wonders, especially with the AI.

See here, it's using AI to do that. Wow, that is just really, really good. Let's see if we remove this guy, let's see how that works.

Oh, okay, now this is where AI is like, hey, I think there needs to be another person there. Okay, not what I wanted, so let's undo that. So you might need to try a couple of times.

So let's say I remove all this and let's see if it does it better this time. Still wanting to put this, whatever it is. So maybe I have to just go in and just remove that.

Okay, that's better. Now he does have a shadow from something that doesn't exist anymore. So we're gonna wanna make sure we get rid of that as well.

There we go. Oh, and the ball that he was either throwing up or catching, there we go. So if you don't mind using AI to do this and you want to really have a good way of removing certain things that are especially difficult to calculate a new background for, the Remove tool can do wonders.

So the idea is that each one of these can do better sometimes. AI does have limited resolution sometimes. So if you're trying to remove a very large thing, sometimes that isn't the best quality in terms of the resolution.

It might be a bit fuzzier and not as sharp and detailed as the rest of the image. So all of these techniques have different uses. And if you try one and it doesn't work, hopefully this has shown you have other options of different ways that you can approach it when one doesn't work, you can try another one.

So experiment with these. Try this in this photo here. You can do exercise 4D, but also try it in your own photos.