From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Removing distracting elements with the Healing, Patch, and Clone tools - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Removing distracting elements with the Healing, Patch, and Clone tools

“

- [Instructor] Photoshop has a number of tools that have been developed over time that make it easy to remove small distracting elements in an image. In the next few minutes we're going to take a look at the Healing Brushes, the Remove tool, the Patch, and the Clone Stamp. I'll start with the Spot Healing Brush tool. When I select this tool, you'll notice that it has an option for Content-Aware. I prefer this option because it enables Photoshop to make up information based on the content around the area that you're trying to retouch. If we want to retouch in a flexible manner, I'll enable the Sample all Layers option. And then in the Layers panel, I'll add a new blank layer, and we'll call this Retouch. Then let's zoom into 100%, and I'll use the space bar to navigate to the lower left area of the image. Now, with the Spot Healing Brush, you don't need to do anything besides paint over the distracting element, and Photoshop will remove it. So no need to set a sample spot. Photoshop's going to do that for you, and it's very easy to remove things. It's actually quite quick, and I use this tool all the time, especially for small areas in the image. One thing that you might want to do is try using a hard edge brush so that you don't get soft areas around the areas that you are trying to retouch. Otherwise, the edges can start looking a little bit mushy. Okay, the next tool is going to be the Remove tool. So this is a newer tool, and it works really well, especially when you're trying to remove, like, an object, like a tricycle from a sidewalk or something. But it works just as well here, as well. So we can select a size, we can choose to remove after each stroke, and sample all layers. So here we've got the little hotspot, and when we drag over, it's going to drag over the pink overlay and then just remove that object. We can use the right bracket and drag over here. Now, let's not forget to get the shadow there of that ice. And then we can click to do any additional touch-ups. So that's the Remove tool. If we move to the Healing Brush tool, you'll notice there's no Content-Aware technology, and that's because you need to sample, or you need to tell Photoshop where to sample from in order to heal. so you have a little bit more control. In fact, you are acting as the Content-Aware. Again, I'll want to be sure to sample either the current layer and below, or in this case all layers will be fine. I'll hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows. That sets my sample area to some good sand here. And then I can paint over any other areas. Now, you'll notice by default that sample point, the crosshairs, it keeps going back to the same location, and that can be really handy if you have an image that only has a little bit of good information in it to pull from, 'cause it'll always go back to that area. But sometimes you can start seeing repeating patterns. So I'm going to enable the Aligned option. And now if I click, say, this distance away from this piece of ice, so I'll Option-click and then paint over it, that distance is going to stay the same. So when I come down here, it's not going to return to the original location. The only thing with using Aligned is that you might have to Option-click a little bit more often in order to sample from different areas in the image as you work around the image. Okay, there's also a Patch tool. So the Patch tool also has this Content-Aware technology. And there's a unique feature with the Patch tool. I'm going to scoot up here. It works really well with gradated areas. So I want to get rid of this piece of ice, let's say right here. And I'm just going to click inside of the lasso that I've drawn and then we can reposition this. When I release the cursor, it's going to patch that area, but I can change both the structure and color options after the fact. So I can come in here to structure and as I move it over to the right, we can see that it's changing like the texture and the shape within that marquee. And if I change the color, well it's gray scale pretty much over there, but if I move it all the way over, it's starting to introduce some color. But those are two options that usually Photoshop doesn't let you change any of the options actually in the options bar after you use the tool. Now, once I click in the image to set down the marching ants, then I can no longer change it. I would be setting the tool up for the next time that I used it, but we could come down here. The only thing with the patch tool is that sometimes it does take a little bit longer to draw around your object as opposed to using one of the other tools. You might have noticed there, when I drew that last one, I wanted to make sure that I also got the shadow area there. All right, so all of these tools are great for retouching. They all kind of have their pros and cons, but the tool I actually like the best when I'm retouching is the clone stamp tool. And that's because it gives us the most control. And you don't tend to see all these kind of soft areas where Photoshop has made up information. So I'm going to switch right now to the clone stamp tool. You can tap the S key or you can just select it here and it's going to make an exact duplicate of an area. So it's important when you're using the clone stamp tool that the area that you're sampling from is going to match the area that you are retouching. Well, with this black sand beach, that's relatively easy. So here I have a good area, but I need to make sure that I'm going to sample all of my layers. And then I'm just going to get rid of these two little guys right here. So you option click to set your sample point. 'Cause now I want to get rid of this big piece of ice. So I'll option click and then come down here and I'll start painting. And I haven't released my cursor, so I'm not going to get any softness around any edge. Now it might start repeating that ice right over there, which it did, but I can come back and get that. So I'm just going to keep painting here. I'm actually going to go all the way down to the bottom because I don't like that darker area there. That was the shadow. And we can keep coming over here, but I think I've done some retouching right in this area 'cause it looks a little soft for me. So what I might do is head over to somewhere else, like maybe up here, hold down the option or the alt key, set my sample point, and then sample from that area to clone over this area right here. Now you do want to make sure that you've got the same size sand and you want to look for any repeating patterns. All right, I'm going to come back over here. Let's grab that good sand again, that kind of clean area. And I'm just going to keep going right over here. I can just option click from either side and just kind of build that in. I did notice back over here, I don't really like this dark area here. We can get rid of that rock and then just get rid of that. Just anything that's going to distract your eye into looking somewhere that you don't want it to look. All right, so we'll move over here to the right. We've got a few more pieces of ice here. I can go ahead and get rid of these. It's up to you as to which one of these tools, they all can work with multiple layers, so that's nice. It's all completely non-destructive. Like I said, this stamp tool does take a little bit more patience. Like here, for example, you'll notice that it's sampling to the right of it. You wouldn't want to sample from up here because then you're going to get a change in tonality as well as color. So as you get better with tonality, it'll be easier to select the sample point. But I think some people get frustrated too quickly with it 'cause it really is, it's just a great tool, especially if you've got an image like this where you know, the tones aren't changing very much. Oof. Look at that big spot. I'm going to use the right bracket key and I'm going to sample, see I'm sampling as close to this ice as I can because I want to be able to go as far to the right as I can with that tool. So that looks good. And you know what? Let's also get rid of this big piece of ice right here. I'll just paint over there. I could have got a bigger brush, but be careful because when you get a bigger brush, if you have softer edges, then you might see a little bit of softness on the edge of them. Alright, at this point I will zoom out using command 0 so we can see the entire image. And then I'll choose file, save as. And we can append this with underscore 01, saving it back into the local pixel editing folder as a Photoshop document. And if we want to toggle the before and after, we can use the eye icon next to retouch. So that was before and that was after. Just tidying up a lot of those distracting pieces of ice. So as we can see, Photoshop's Healing brushes, the Remove tool, the patch and the clone stamp tool can all help eliminate unwanted objects in our images.

Contents