Lesson C: Basic Retouching

The photo of the Italian hill town (“town_too_blue.psd”) has several problems. First, I realize that it’s kind of boring. Yes, it looks like a nice town, but there’s nothing notable or unusual about it. That’s why we’re going to put a bird on it. Also, although it was photographed near sunset, the golden light seems to be missing. It’s too blue. We’ll fix that in Lesson D, shortly.

First, let’s deal with those ugly blemishes in the sky. These appear to be bits of dust on my camera’s sensor and so are likely in the photos I made shortly after this one too. To deal with these, we’re going to use a powerful (but simple-to-use) tool and a professional workflow. See the “Retouching & Repair” chapter in the Compendium for much more.

Nondestructive Retouching

Retouching is almost always obscuring flaws or blemishes with more acceptable material. That is, we take good bits from one part of an image (or another one) and put those over the bad bits. Because I make mistakes or change my mind, I use layers when I do this. I put the good bits on their own layer. If I later realize I made an error, I simply erase that bit.

• In the image “town_too_blue.psd,” create a new layer. Either use the Layers panel menu (the small lines in that panel’s upper-right corner) to choose New Layer… or go to Layer > New > Layer…. This will open a dialog box that prompts for a name. Let’s use “Retouch.”

That is now the active (highlighted) layer in the Layers panel. Of the many tools Photoshop has for retouching, let’s just go with the one that’s used most often.

• In the Tools panel, select the Spot Healing Brush tool (it resembles a bandage with a dotted oval). Like many tools, this one needs its options adjusted before it’s as good as we’d like it to be. In this case, to create repairs (good bits) on your new layer, you have more to do.
• Check the box that reads Sample All Layers in the Options Bar along the top of the screen. Otherwise, this tool won’t even see the good pixels on the layer below, let alone sample them (pick them up).
• This tool uses a brush cursor to “paint” over blemishes. Use the bracket keys on your keyboard ([ or ]) to shrink or enlarge the brush so it’s a little bigger than those sensor-dust spots. The size is noted near the left end of the Options Bar. I chose a size of about 80 pixels.
• “Paint” over the spot, completely covering it. This identifies the problem. Let go, and Photoshop fixes it!

Even the spot on the roof of the church is fixed easily. If you make a mistake, undo is a quick ⌘-Z/Ctrl-Z.