Skin Retouch - Unglamorous Job for Glamorous Faces

The skin retouch is the one of the most requested during any photo shoot. The skin retouch can be in the form of removal of acnes, freckles, or any random spots on the model or person's skin.

Photoshop provides the Healing Brush tool, which is a powerful and simple tool that can be used to remove imperfections in the skin. The tool is present in almost all version of the Photoshop. There are a number of options available for the use of this tool. To select the healing brush tool, select the image, which looks like a bandage icon in the toolbox. The tool can also be selected by using the shortcut key by pressing the J key on the keyboard. When the icon is clicked a number of options are revealed, including the spot healing brush tool, the healing brush tool, and patch tool.

The spot healing brush is the simplest of the three options and is used to take care of small imperfections in which there is an even area around the mark. The tool takes the sample from the pixels around the mark and matches it in terms of texture, lighting and the tone. After selecting the tool select a brush that is larger than the mark and simply click on the mark to remove it. For large marks or scratches, the brush can be dragged across the area.

The second tool, the healing brush allows the user to select the sample from which the marks can be blended to remove them. In this tool the user can select a sample or a preset pattern to remove unwanted marks. For example, there is an image in which there is fine detail of the imperfections. Now to remove this imperfection, first select the healing brush tool and press alt and click to select the source sample. Make sure to select the sample area that closely resembles the area around the imperfections. The things to look in while selecting the source include the texture, the tone and the shadows. After finalizing the source, click on the imperfections similar to the previous method used in the first tool. That’s it after some trail and errors, the mark will be completely removed.

The third and the most complicated one is the patch tool. This tool can be defined as a combination of the lasso tool and healing brush. The tool is good for correcting large areas of the image. The healing brush allows correction in the image based on the source or a pre-set pattern; the patch tool provides a number of different options. One of the most used one is to select the area of imperfection by dragging around it, similar to the lasso tool. While doing this, make sure to select the Source Mode in the option bar. Now drag the selection to an area where Photoshop can blend the imperfection and release. Like other Photoshop techniques, correcting marks using the tools need a lot of patience and attention to details.