Alright. So, much for the clone stamp tool. Wonderful tool, really excellent stuff.

We are now going to move on to the healing functions in Photoshop which if anything are more extraordinary. So, I am going to go ahead and minimize these two windows, and notice in the background, I covertly opened another image that I would like you to open. It is also inside the “Lesson 9” folder that is inside the “Part 1” folder, and it is called Neebles Scenes.jpeg and this is another replica at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I just love this place.

However, I guess, the way the replica was made involves scenes of some sort and I would like to go ahead and get rid of those scenes and I am going to do that by using the healing brush. And the healing brush is over here. It is this little band aid icon right there. Now, your tool may still be set to the “Red Eye” tool if you have been working in order. If it is, just go ahead and switch to the “Spot Healing Brush” tool.

Now, this tool is new to Photoshop CS. It comes from elements by the way. It comes from Photoshop Elements 3 and I must say, I do not care for it. Photoshop sometimes does take tools from Elements. For example, it took the “Red Eye” tool from Elements and that is a great tool. I love the one that one works. The spot healing brush is supposed to be an easy to use tool as well and it is easy to use. You just start in panning with it.

However, it frequently works incorrectly. So, the idea is you do not have to specify a clone point. Another way you have to specify a clone point with a clone stamp tool, well, with this spot healing brush, you do not have to. You do not specify a clone point. You just start in panning. So, I will just start panning over one of this scenes and notice as I am panning, the scene ends up just looking darker just to show me where my brushstroke is.

As soon as I release, then it goes ahead and finds some similar portion of the image supposedly and them just deals in the scene. Now, sometimes, it works brilliantly. Like this time right now, it worked great. I think that was a really good one. I am going to increase the size of the brush a little more here but sometimes it does not work so well. I will go ahead and clone another brushstroke and see how that works too.

See, this Photoshop’s way of making me look bad. Frankly, I must say, this is what I do not appreciate about this tool. It is how it is making me look bad right now. There we go. Now, it messed up and that is the problem. I will go ahead and undo that and try it again. I am going to go ahead and drag up this scene right here. As soon I release, what happens, well, it grabs stuff from the wrong portion of the image.

It is cloning from a different portion of the image. The difference is Photoshop is deciding which portion of the image to clone instead of letting you decide which portion of the image to clone which I think frankly is kind of a bad thing because although it is easier to use, and you let Photoshop be in charge and all that jazz. Letting Photoshop be in charge is not always a good things. Sometimes Photoshop makes good decisions like down here and sometimes it makes rotten decisions like up here.