Removing blemishes from a portrait using Photoshop
You have probably heard the saying “no one is perfect”. This becomes very apparent when you have to work on portrait photos. Removing blemishes is a quick and easy task and can be sometimes very effective, especially with Wedding, Fashion and Glamour portraits. Please note, if you are doing paid work for a client, it is important to get the approval to remove blemishes from the person, and then make subtle and well-made alterations. Do not remove permanent scars, moles or other disfigurements unless you are specifically asked to do so. You should concentrate on removing small blemishes, spots, sunburn or anything that is not long lasting. Sure, while excessive airbrushing in order to sell products is bad, zapping that zit from a nice photo is totally legit. The trick is to do it in a manner that is natural. The goal is to maintain as much of the original skin texture as possible and use techniques that look natural, and not pasty and fake. Here in this tutorial we are going to use the Clone and Healing brush to remove blemishes. For removing acne we shall use the Healing brush. Open the image into Photoshop to begin with! The first step is to identify the blemishes to be removed. These could be moles, acne, spots or any other imperfections that detract from the photograph. Here in the screenshot you can see that the girl has acne on her face and dark circles under her eyes. We will learn how to remove them in a proper way:
1Creating a new blank layer
The Healing brush tool can work on a blank layer. Working on a blank layer gives you opacity control and this is a nondestructive method of retouching because you don’t alter the actual pixel of your image. Press SHIFT+CTRL+N to create a new blank layer over your image and you will see that Photoshop has automatically named it as
Layer1. You can see the layer in the layer panel. If your layer panel is not open press F7 to open it. Select the Healing brush tool by pressing the shortcut key “J”. When you select the Healing Brush, the option bar becomes active. Make sure that in the tool option bar you have selected the Sample all Layers option bar. This will let the Healing Brush select the pixels on the layers below your blank layer.
2 Brush selection
To make things more effective, we need the right kind of brush. If too hard then it will show. I normally use hardness and spacing of 10%, the diameter will change as you work so there is no set size for this. You can experiment with these settings; these are just what I find most effective but you may change it and experiment with other settings. A soft brush creates strokes with blurred edges that blend in the paint better. Kindly note small corrections blend in better than large workovers. Remember you want your Photoshop work to be obscure. For a better blending and if you need more source points, press ALT and just click a couple of times on different areas of the image to reset the source point.
3 Selecting the Brush Modes
Try the Lighten brush mode when fixing skin problems. With the brush mode set to Lighten, Photoshop will only replace pixels that are darker than the good texture data. Since pimples and other skin blemishes are usually darker than normal skin tone, only the pimple or blemish itself gets replaced, leaving more of the surrounding original image intact. If a blemish happens to be lighter than the normal skin tone, use the Darken mode. You can quickly switch to the brush modes for the Clone or Healing Brush from your keyboard by holding down the Shift key and pressing the + or - keys. Select “Aligned” and the sample point will move as you move the mouse. Most of the time, it is best to select “Aligned”. When using the clone stamp tool, take help of any horizontal of vertical line of some sort as needed and make sure the brush edges are aligned with it when you set the source point and when you make that initial click. As long as you have those first two clicks aligned, the rest will remain aligned.
4 Setting Clone Stamp preview (Photoshop CS4 and CS5 only)
Open Clone source panel ( Window > Clone Source). It has options for the Clone Stamp tools or Healing Brush tools. You can set upto five different sample sources and quickly select the one you need without re-sampling each time you need to change to a different source. Select Show Overlay, to view an overlay of your sample source to make it easier to clone the source in a specific location. This is a big time-saver! This works great for aligning objects that were a hit and miss in the past, such as straight edges, critical areas, and so on. You can also scale or rotate the sample source for a better match of the size and orientation of the cloning destination by changing the other options available in this panel.