Retouching: Free Photoshop Tutorial

Topics covered in this Photoshop tutorial:

Healing Brush with Rotation, Content-Aware Fill, Patch Tool

Exercise Preview

Photo by Peggy_Marco on Pixabay

Exercise Overview

In this exercise you’ll learn about different tools for retouching and removing unwanted parts of photos.

Healing Brush with Rotation

1. From the Photoshop Class folder, open the 4D Skier.jpg file.

2. In the Layers panel, the Background layer is already selected. To duplicate the layer press Cmd–J (Mac) or Ctrl–J (Windows).

   NOTE: This is the same as choosing Layer > New > Layer Via Copy which is like doing a copy and paste all in one quick step.

3. Rename the new layer as retouching
4. Zoom in on the guy at the bottom of the photo. We want to remove this guy.
5. In the Tools panel, click on the Lasso tool .
6. Drag a selection area around the guy at the bottom of the photo, including a little of the snow around him (without going too far outside of him).

7. Hit Shift–Delete (Mac) or Shift–Backspace (Windows).

   If you see a Fill dialog appear, make sure Contents is set to Content-Aware and hit Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to close the dialog.

8. Press Cmd–D (Mac) or Ctrl–D (Windows) to deselect.

   If you were lucky, the ridge line of the snow may look good, but Photoshop may not have done a perfect job of creating a good line. Let’s see how to do that manually.

9. In the Tools panel, click and hold on the Spot Healing Brush tool and choose the Healing Brush tool .
10. To size the brush, hover over the bad area of the snow ridge line and use the [ or ] keys until the brush covers the area you want to fix.
11. Option–click (Mac) or Alt–click (Windows) on the snow ridge line to the right of where the man used to be (choose an area you think would work well in the space where the man used to be).

12. Hover the cursor over where the man was (the bad area) and:

    • The ridge most likely does not line up on both sides, because the angle is wrong. Luckily we can rotate it!
    • Hold Option–Shift (Mac) or Alt–Shift (Windows) and press the < or > keys as you watch the preview to see it rotating!
    • Once you’ve found a rotation that works, click to change the pixels.

13. If it doesn’t look good, try again until you get something you’re happy with (maybe sample a different area by Option–clicking (Mac) or Alt–clicking (Windows) again).

Removing the Rotation from the Healing Brush

Once you like the final result, we need to remove the rotation.

1. Go into the Window menu and choose Clone Source.

2. On the right, click the Reset transform button .

   You’ll notice the number of degrees (°) to the left of that gets reset back to 0.

3. Now the tool is all set for the next time you’ll use it.

Comparing Different Techniques: Content-Aware Fill, Healing Brush, & Patch Tool

Each retouching technique has times when it works and when it does not, which is why it’s good to know various approaches. You won’t always know which is best until you try them, so if one doesn’t work you can try another!

Content-Aware Fill

1. From the Photoshop Class folder, open the 4D Beach at sunset.jpg file.
2. In the Layers panel, the Background layer is already selected. To duplicate the layer press Cmd–J (Mac) or Ctrl–J (Windows).

3. Rename the new layer as retouching

4. At the far left there are 2 people in the waves. Being at the edge can present a challenge for content-aware fill because there’s less information to look around it.
5. In the Tools panel, click on the Lasso tool .
6. Drag a selection area around the 2 people on the far left, including a little of the background around them.

7. Hit Shift–Delete (Mac) or Shift–Backspace (Windows).

   If you see a Fill dialog appear, make sure Contents is set to Content-Aware and hit Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to close the dialog.

8. Depending on your selection, it may have done a good, mediocre, or bad job.

   If it did an OK job you might even be able to do some more content-aware fills to finish it up, but let’s see a different way.

9. Press Cmd–Z (Mac) or Ctrl–Z (Windows) to undo and bring the people back.

10. Press Cmd–D (Mac) or Ctrl–D (Windows) to deselect.

Healing Brush

1. In the Tools panel, choose the Healing Brush tool .
2. Set your brush size to 80px.
3. Option–click (Mac) or Alt–click (Windows) in an area to the right of the 2 people, without getting too close to the people (you need to be about the width of the people away). Choose an area that has something you can line things up with, like the line at the top of a wave.

4. Hover over the people and once you’ve lined up the waves, drag and paint over both people in one single drag.

   It’s best not to stop and then start again because the healing brush wants you to paint over all the stuff to remove, so it can blend that area with the surrounding good stuff.

5. How well this worked depends on the area you chose to sample from.

6. Let’s see another technique. Press Cmd–Z (Mac) or Ctrl–Z (Windows) until you bring the people back.

   Make sure you have no selection before continuing.

Patch Tool

1. In the Tools panel, click and hold on the Healing Brush tool and choose the Patch tool .

2. Initially this tool will work like a Lasso tool for making selections (although you can use any tool to make a selection for patching with the patch tool).

   Drag a selection area around the 2 people on the far left.

3. In the Options bar at the top of the window:

   • Set Patch to Content-Aware.
   • Set both Structure and Color to 4.

4. Click anywhere inside the selection and drag to the right over a part of the waves that look good (you’ll see a preview back in the original selected area). Once you line things up release the cursor and Photoshop will do additional blending to help it to look better.

5. Press Cmd–D (Mac) or Ctrl–D (Windows) to deselect.

Using the Patch tool gives you more control and can help out in certain cases when you have to line things up (or Photoshop doesn’t make good guesses for you).

More Practice

Good retouching requires skill which comes with experience, so practice is what you need to get better.

We want to keep at least the 3 largest people (and the surfer also looks nice) but the rest of the people could be removed. Try out the various different techniques to see which work well. If one doesn’t work, undo it and try another.

When removing people, don’t forget to also remove their reflections!