Mama’s Healing Hair Chore

Hi! This is Mama Shan with another video chore, focusing on healing hairs that are close to the hairline. Now if you are working in version CS2 and up, you should create a new layer above your background to do your healing on. If you are on versions prior to that, version seven in CS, you want to duplicate the background layer and do this procedure.

The first thing that you would probably do, let us do it the normal way and see what happens is select your healing brush over here, the Healing Brush Tool, and click the option sample all layers in the top options bar. Do not click align. Because as long as you keep your mouse held down, you are getting it aligned.

Now the way to use this tool, just to brief over view for those of you that already know it but for those of you who do not, is you have to source the area that you want to basically use as the pattern to overlay the hair. So you would hold down your Alt Key on a PC, or Option Key on a Macintosh. Your cursor changes to sort of like this telescopic cursor, it has a little cross here inside the circle.

When it is in that state, you click on a good area so I am clicking right now, and then you release the Option or Alt Key and position your cursor over the area that you want to clone. And then you click and drag. And then release, because see where that cross here is that is following it. Right now, it is getting ready to go into another hair area. If I continue, it is going to clone that other hair in that area. When I release, it just covers it all up. And it works fine for hairs that are a distance away from the majority of the hair.

Now what happens if I try to clean up these hairs that are very close? Let us come out here and I will option click on this area right here to source a point and release. And then move in to this hair line area, and I will click and I will drag upward, like so. And I will release and you get the smear. And this occurs whether you are using a round healing brush or if you have customized your healing brushes to elliptical ones. The process is still going to happen. When I get too close to that hair line and try to heal, I am going to get smear instead of healing.

So I am going to show you how you can do this without getting smear. So I am going to delete this layer that I have already started. And I am going to create a new layer. I am in version CS2. If you are in version CS or seven, then you would want to duplicate your background layer. If you are in CS2 and up, you want to create a new layer. Versions prior to that, you want to duplicate the background layer.

Next step is to not choose the healing brush. But what we are going to choose is the Smudge Tool. And if you do not see the Smudge Tool which is located underneath the Eraser Tool, just click on whatever tool is showing it, maybe the Blur Tool click and hold, and pick the Smudge Tool which is that little finger icon in the tool box.

By default, this is set to normal mode with the strength of the 50%. Now I am going to up the percentage here, just type in 60%, just a little stronger. Again, sample all layers box checked so that when I do my smudging, it is going to be on layer one. I am going to increase the brush size by clicking the right square bracket key a couple of times, about like this. And what I am going to proceed to do is to smudge from the skin outward to go into the hair. I am not clicking yet but I am just showing you the general direction of how we want to do our smudge. So I am just going to click here, and I am going to smudge in there, click here, and I am going to in to the hair line about an eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch, just smudging the skin areas up here like so. Just keep on smudging, go in there, a good distance. Do not worry; I am not going to leave it like this. This looks pretty scary right now but you will see how easy this works and we avoid smear. And we get a nice clean up of those hairs. And I am just going to squish around here, sort of like finger painting with oil paint is what it feels like.

So I am just