Photo Retouching in Photoshop: Tips for Removing Distractions

Let's get started learning how to do photo retouching. I'm going to open up an image from our class files here, this 1D deer. And there's nothing majorly wrong with this image, but I would like to help us focus on the subject matter by getting rid of some of the distractions, like this really bright area here, and some of the other lighter parts as well.

There might be some areas here, like these fall leaves, which are brown, which are kind of maybe pulling some of our attention away from the deer as well. So I'd like to get rid of some of these. Essentially, the technique that we'll be using is taking some of the surroundings and copying and kind of painting them over some areas, kind of like copy and paste, but we're going to be copying and painting.

There are different ways that you can go about this, but let's get started with some easy, quick approaches that you can take. As I make changes to these pixels, I have to think about what layer I'm working on. If I continue working on the background layer and I eventually don't like something that I did, if I've already saved and closed the file, I would not be able to undo that.

So I want to work on another layer. Now, some tools can work just on their own layer, sampling from a different layer. Some tools can't.

So to get started with retouching, a lot of times what I do, instead of just creating a new blank layer, which does not have a copy of those pixels, I duplicate the current layer. And the reason is because some tools, depending on what we're doing, do require all of your pixels to be there. So I'm going to drag that layer to the trash, and I'm going to duplicate this current layer.

There's a couple ways we could do that. We could right click or control click if you're on a Mac, and we could duplicate the layer that way. We can also drag it to the new icon.

So instead of clicking the new icon there, I can drag the current layer to it, and that will duplicate the layer. And I'm going to call this retouching. That's where I'm going to put my retouching.

And before I continue, I need to make sure that that is not only created, but it's selected. If I work on the background layer, I won't be able to see what I do. There's a new copy placed on top.

And just so we can really understand what's going on here, let me select that top layer, and let me use my move tool here. Let's see, there is a literal copy placed on top in exactly the same position. So when I hide and show it, see if there's a little bit of a shift, that means it wasn't in the same position.

I'm going to go back into my layers with my history panel here. So if I go into history, which I can find under window history, I'm going to go back before I move that, because I don't want to move that layer. I want it to be in exactly the same position.

When you duplicate that layer, there is no shift. So when I hide and show it, it is showing something, but I don't see it. I'm going to work on that top layer, because if I work on the bottom layer, we're not going to be able to see what happens.

I want to keep my background layer as the original. This will also be really good for seeing the before and after, because we want to make sure that we like the retouching that we've done. So I'll be able to kind of hide this one to show the before and after later.

So I'm going to have that retouching layer selected, and I'm going to go choose one of the various healing brushes. Now, these healing brushes, they are kind of like copy, paste, and then blend. Unlike the clone stamp, where when we use a clone stamp, that is a copy, paste, and there is no blending step.

So if you copy and paste something that doesn't look good, your retouching is not going to look good. So the healing brushes are going to blend your work in, and they make it easier to do good looking retouching. So in many ways, this is my first go-to tool that I'm going to choose.

So with the spot healing brush, this is where we're going to paint in. And when we choose a new tool, we have to check the settings for it. And I'm going to go into the size and increase the size, because I need a brush that's a bit more appropriate to the size that I'm going to be replacing.

I don't want it to be vastly bigger than the thing that I'm going to be replacing, because wherever I paint with this, it is going to choose new pixels. And I do think that the original pixels are the best quality pixels. They are natural, correct, true pixels.

So I want this to be a little bit smaller, and I'll kind of paint over the area, and only paint the most minimal area that I actually want to remove. So with this tool, it's a very simple tool to use. You simply drag over the area that you want to replace.

And when you let go, after you've highlighted that in darkness there, once you let go, it'll look around the surrounding area and kind of copy, paste, blend, and make it all look nice. So again, if I drag over an area, and the darkened area is the highlighted area that I'm going to be changing, when I let go, it looks around the surrounding areas and heals that area. So if I drag over this area, now notice it kind of copied some of this up there.

So if I don't like this shape, I could also just get rid of that. And it'll look around its surroundings and put it in there. There might be certain things that you don't like, so you can highlight around all of that.

And what you want to do is you want to highlight the whole area and make sure that all the stuff you want to remove is covered over by this dark area, so that when it looks around, it only sees goodness, things that you think are good. And it'll take from that surrounding area and pull those good things in. What you don't want to do is just paint over a little bit and let go, and then paint over a little bit and let go.

So it thinks that what it's looking around at is good stuff. So you don't want to cover over just part of the badness and then do it again and do it again. You want to do it all in one shot for this to work properly.

So I'm going to go into my history panel and just go back a couple of steps. Or I could also use my edit menu here, and I could say undo to go one step back, undo to go another step back. So you want to cover over the whole bad area and let it do its job.

So this whole area, I'm going to drag over in just one motion, getting all of the bad areas so that when it looks around, it only sees good stuff, and then it will decide what it wants to put there. Now with this tool, you do not get to decide what it puts there. It's going to decide for itself.

Later we'll come back, we'll talk about retouching in more depth, where if you do want more control, you can have some say in what it puts there. But for right now, this actually is a really quick way of doing things. You just drag over areas that you don't like, and it very quickly gets rid of them.

As its name implies, it is for little spots. So it works great for just really quickly, just getting rid of little spots that you don't like. It looks around now.

Okay. Now this time it didn't do such a good job. Let me zoom in there and see, I don't like that at all.

So I'm going to undo. And if you don't like the first time it does it, just try it again and it will give you a different result. Now, if it still doesn't do what you like, let me undo, try it again.

So you can try it several times. Like I said, there are other methods you can use. In fact, let me see one of those.

Let me undo. Instead of making a kind of painted area using the healing brush, you can use a selection tool. So it might be easier for you to draw a selection over it.

There are a variety of different selection tools. For example, hidden behind the selection brush here, if I press and hold, I can get to the hidden tools and then get to the lasso tool. The lasso tool allows you to select an area to say, this is the area that contains stuff that I don't like.

And then you can heal that area to say, I don't want what's there. I want it to figure out something new by looking around and taking some of those surroundings and kind of mixing it in there. And so we can do that using our fill.

We want to fill this area. Before I do that, when we were in the spot healing brush, it was using what's called content aware. So that's how it was healing that area.

Content aware means it looks around and says, I'm aware of the content that's in your image, and I will use some of the content to generate new stuff. This is not AI generated. There is things like generative fill, where it will use artificial intelligence to create something literally out of nothing.

No, content aware is not using artificial intelligence. It is just looking around and saying, I will use existing things. I won't completely make up something new.

So in that sense, it's both a pro and a con. The pro part is it does match your image. It is using other things that really match.

The bad part about it is if you're trying to remove a big area, maybe it does need to make up something. And this content aware does not generate its own brand new stuff, whereas something like generative fill could. But in most cases where you're just removing small areas, I don't want to use artificial intelligence to do that, for it to create something new.

I just want to use what's already in my image. So just keep that in mind. That's called content aware.

That's what we've been using with the spot healing brush. When I go to my selection tool, like my lasso, and I select the area that I want, instead of painting over it, I'm dragging around, selecting that area. And now I can say, let me fill that.

Now there is a content aware fill, but that's a much more complicated thing. It does give you a lot more control, but it's not as quick. That is going to be for something that is more time consuming and difficult.

I want something that's quick. So I just want the regular fill and for it to be content aware. I know that might sound very similar, but that is different than saying content aware fill, where if you do accidentally choose this, this goes into a whole other workspace, which gives you a whole lot more options.

And you can do a lot of cool stuff in there, but that's beyond what I really need for this very simple thing. And it'll take more time than I want to spend on this. So I'm just going to cancel that.

And instead I'm going to do the regular fill with content aware, meaning it'll look around and figure out what goes there and decides what to put there. And I just clicked off to get rid of that selection. So when you have a selection, you can either just click off to deselect, or you can also go up to your select menu and say, deselect.

That is command D for deselect on the Mac or control D for deselect on windows. And if you don't like parts of this, we can, of course, select the parts of this. If you are doing content aware fill a lot using this fill option here, I know there is an F key for this.

I'm not always very good about remembering. Is it F4? Is it F5? So there's actually a different keyboard shortcut, which they don't list, but it still works. And that is shift delete or shift backspace on windows.

And I don't want to delete it because deleting it would show through to the underlying layer. But when you do that shift delete or shift backspace on windows, then it comes up with that. So that I think is an easier keyboard shortcut because you really want to remove this thing.

So it's kind of like, Hey, I want to get, I want to delete this thing. Right. And then you can give another shot and see if you like that.

And that I think is actually looking quite good. If you need to remove something bigger, you can, but the bigger the area, the harder it is going to be if we're using this content aware, because it's going to look around its surroundings. It's not going to be using artificial intelligence to try to figure out what to put there.

And so sometimes these really large areas, it doesn't do so well that something maybe generative AI would be good for doing something like that. So we could do this fill or shift delete on the Mac or shift backspace on windows, fill it with content aware. And believe it or not, that's still did a pretty darn good, decent job.

Now there's some parts here that I don't like, but as far as a starting point, that's actually not bad. Although that's the subject matter. So I don't want to actually do that, but I just wanted to show you on a larger spot there.

So I'm just going to undo that and undo, undo to go back to that point. So my first approach is quickly use this body healing brush, get rid of the little, little things. And if it's easier for you to make a selection, feel free, whichever way is easier.

Is it easier for you to paint over something or is it easier for you to use the lasso? The end effect is going to be the same. You're using the same underlying technology to figure out what's going to go there. It's just a matter of, do you rather make a selection or do you rather paint to see the finished before and after we can come over to our layers panel.

We can hide the retouching layer, show the retouching layer. And what we're doing is we're showing through to the original layer that was underneath. So this is the before, and this is the after without all those distracting things left over to save this file.

We go to file, save as, and I'm going to store it back in the Photoshop class and I'm saving it as a Photoshop document. While we often start with JPEGs from our digital cameras or from scanners, when we want to work and save an editable file that has all of our layers saving as a Photoshop document, which is a PSD for Photoshop document, we'll maintain all of our layers and our editability. So let's say I go ahead and save this.

Maximize compatibility means that this is going to be more compatible with other Adobe applications such as InDesign or Illustrator. Also, it's more backwards compatible if you ever need to go back to an older version of Photoshop. But even so, even if you're never going to go back to an older version, leave maximize compatibility checked on.

So it's more compatible with other Adobe applications. To be honest, I don't know why they bother asking you this. You can certainly say don't show again and just leave it on so that you're always maximizing that compatibility and you'll never be nagged by this dialogue ever again.

So in the future, whenever I open that Photoshop document up, because it's a Photoshop document, it supports those layers. And so when you want to maintain the editability, when you want to maintain every feature of Photoshop, be sure to save as a Photoshop document. In a later video, we'll take a look at if you want to share this on the web, if you want to print it, or you want to put it into other Adobe applications.

We'll talk about the appropriate file formats for all of those situations, for print, for web. But for right now, as you're working, save your editable files as Photoshop documents. So go through the workbook exercise, exercise 1B, so you can practice this yourself.