PICshopy: Retouching Techniques in photoshop

Retouching Techniques

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re
gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.
—Mel Brooks

Retouching Techniques

If you’re brave enough to bring up the subject of retouch-
ing at a photographer’s convention, you’re likely to spark
a lively debate. A purist might say that every aspect of a
photograph (including the ﬂaws) is a perfect reﬂection
of reality and you should never tamper with it. A graphic
artist, who makes a living from altering images, might say
that an original photograph is just the foundation of an
image, and that “tampering” is just a means of enhanc-
ing it. Either way, retouching photographs has become
an everyday necessity for almost anyone who deals with
graphic images. And when it comes to retouching, hands
down, nothing does it better than Photoshop.
Photoshop CS4 packs an awesome arsenal of retouching

While we’ll concentrate on touching
up faces, don’t forget that these
tools can be used on any type of
image. A stray light switch on a
wall detracting from the shot? No
problem—just use the Patch tool!

tools. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to do all sorts of
neat things, including retouching old ripped photos, get-
ting rid of shiny spots on foreheads, adjusting the satura-
tion of small areas—even giving someone “instant plastic
surgery.”

Patch Tool

The Patch tool (hidden under the Healing Brush in the
Tools panel) is innovative yet simple. You select an area of
the image that needs to be touched up, such as a blemish,
tattoo, or logo you don’t have permission to use (Figure
11.1), click in the middle of the selection, and drag it to
an area of the image that has similar texture but without
whatever you’re trying to remove. As you move the mouse,
Photoshop previews the source area (from which you’re
copying) in the destination area you initially selected

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(Figure 11.2). When you release the mouse button, Photo-
shop “patches” the destination area with the source area
(Figure 11.3), making sure that the brightness and color
is consistent with the edge of the original selection, and
blending the new texture with that edge. You simply have
to try it to see how cool it is.

Figure 11.1 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.2 Drag the selection to an
area of clean texture.

Figure 11.3 The result of using the
Patch tool.

You can even sample from an area that’s radically differ-
ent in brightness and color (Figure 11.4), because the
Patch tool picks up only the texture from the area that it
samples (Figure 11.5). The main thing you should look for
is a source area that has the proper texture to match the
destination area you’re attempting to retouch.

Figure 11.4 You can drag the selec-

Figure 11.5 Only the texture is copied.

tion to an area that contains radically
different colors and brightness.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

You still need to be careful when making selections. Try
for the smallest selection that will completely encompass
the defect you’re trying to retouch. The larger the area
being patched, the less likely it will look good (Figures 11.6
and 11.7).

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Figure 11.6 Patching a large selection
makes the model’s inner arm look

Figure 11.7 A small selection pro-
duces a nicer blend.

artificial. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

This tool doesn’t have many options (Figure 11.8). The
main choice is whether to patch the source or the destina-
tion. With the Patch option set to Source (which you’ll
probably use 95% of the time), Photoshop replaces the
area that was originally selected with a combination of
the brightness and color values from its edge, along with
the texture from the source area to which you drag the
selection (Figures 11.9 and 11.10). Using the Destination
setting does the opposite, letting you pick from a clean
area of the original and then dragging it over the area that
needs to be patched—for example, cloning a birthmark
(Figures 11.11 and 11.12).

Figure 11.8 The options bar for the Patch tool.

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Figure 11.9 Using the Source setting
while dragging a birthmark from
under the eye to an area of clean
texture. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.10 The clean texture is
copied to the area under the eye and
blended automatically.

Figure 11.11 Using the Destination
setting while dragging a clean area of
the skin to an area that needs retouch-
ing, or to replicate a birthmark.

If you can’t ﬁnd a clean area from which to steal texture,
you can select a pattern by clicking the down arrow in
the options bar (Figure 11.13) and then clicking the Use
Pattern button. Patching with a pattern isn’t very effective
unless you’ve created a custom pattern for this speciﬁc pur-
pose. Check out the bonus video “Type and Background
Effects” at www.danablan.com/photoshop for details on
how to create your own patterns.

Figure 11.12 The birthmark is

Figure 11.13 Choosing a texture.

blended into the surrounding image.

The Patch tool is best for situations where you’re dealing
with scratches, blemishes, or other defects in an area that
should otherwise be relatively consistent in color (such
as skin). Used on walls, ﬂoors, automobiles, and so on, it

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can even maintain some of the three-dimensionality of the
surface with its blending capabilities (Figures 11.14 and
11.15). But it’s not very useful for an area with multiple
colors that shouldn’t be blended. In that case, you should
switch to the Clone Stamp tool.

Figure 11.14 The original image.
(©Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com.)

Figure 11.15 Three passes with the
Patch tool covered this large area.

If you use the Patch tool to remove all wrinkles and blem-
ishes from someone’s face, the person may no longer be

Figure 11.16 The Fade dialog.

An alternative to using the Fade
command is to duplicate the origi-
nal image layer before performing
retouching, and then adjust the
Opacity setting at the top of the
Layers panel to blend the retouched
layer with the underlying image.

Another alternative is to duplicate
the background layer and apply the
Patch tool on the duplicate. Then
fade the opacity of the layer to
reveal and blend the original layer
to your liking.

recognizable. When you retouch facial features, choose
Edit > Fade Patch Selection immediately after applying a
patch (Figure 11.16). This feature allows you to change
how the patch applies to the original image. Move the
Opacity slider all the way to the left and then slowly move it
toward the right until you reach the lowest Opacity setting
that lessens the look of the undesirable feature without
completely removing it (Figures 11.17 to 11.19). This
technique is essential when working with shiny skin. If you
use the Patch tool at full strength, you’ll lose the dimen-
sionality of the skin, but fading it back makes the area look
less shiny, without completely evening out the lighting on
the skin.
The Patch tool is most useful when working on large
areas; it’s just too cumbersome for retouching dozens
of small blemishes. For that situation, switch to the
Healing Brush, which can make those small retouching

jobs a breeze.

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Figure 11.17 The original image has
shiny patches on the model’s chin,
chest, right shoulder, and under her
right eye. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.18 Using the Patch tool
at full strength reduces the shine
but removes some of the skin’s
dimensionality.

Figure 11.19 Result of fading each
application of the Patch tool to about
40% opacity.

Healing Brush

The Healing Brush works using the same general concepts
as the Patch tool. It attempts to patch a defect in the image
by using the texture from another area and blending all
the edges with the surrounding colors. The main differ-
ence between the two tools is that the Patch tool works by
moving a selection, whereas the Healing Brush allows you
to paint over the area that needs to be repaired.
To use the Healing Brush, Option/Alt-click the area you
want to use (Figure 11.20), usually a part of the skin or
surface that’s free of blemishes, and then click and drag
it onto the area that needs ﬁxing (Figure 11.21). Be sure
to cover the entire destination area without releasing the
mouse button. Once you release the mouse button, Photo-
shop checks the edges of the destination area you covered
to make sure that the “patch” blends with the color and
brightness of the surrounding area (Figure 11.22).

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Figure 11.20 Option/Alt-click the
source area to sample it. (©2008 Dan
Ablan.)

Figure 11.21 Paint across the destina-
tion area that needs to be retouched.
Here we’re covering some tiny
dimpled areas on the model’s skin to

Figure 11.22 When you release the
mouse button, Photoshop blends the
retouched area into the surrounding
image.

the right of her nose.

You might need to use a soft-edged brush to get a good
blend (Figures 11.23 and 11.24). A good starting point is

Choose a brush from the Brush
drop-down menu in the options
bar. The Healing Brush ignores the
stand-alone Brushes panel because
it doesn’t use the advanced settings
available in that panel.

If you need a really soft brush (0%
hardness), use the Healing Brush

to use a brush with a Hardness setting of 75%.

with its blending mode set to
Replace. That setting will make it
act like the Clone Stamp tool, but
it won’t produce blurry results with
soft-edged brushes.

Figure 11.23 Result of using a hard-
edged brush under the model’s eye.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.24 The difference is very
subtle, but a soft-edged brush blends
the results better with the surround-
ing image than the hard-edged
brush does.

Layers
The Healing Brush works on one layer at a time, but you
can choose to sample other layers. In the options bar for
the Healing Brush, open the Sample drop-down menu
and choose Current Layer, Current & Below, or All Layers
(Figure 11.25). If you choose All Layers, Photoshop acts as
if the document has no layers at all. In other words, it will
be able to take from any layer below the cursor, as if all the
layers were combined. However, it will apply the healing
information only on the active layer.

Figure 11.25 The options bar for the Healing Brush.

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One handy option is to create a layer just for doing your
retouching. Then you won’t have to worry about making
a mistake as you work, because the information you’re
retouching is sitting on its own layer, with the unretouched
image directly below it (Figures 11.26 to 11.28). This tech-
nique allows you to switch over to the Eraser tool and erase
small areas of that layer, or do other things such as lower
the opacity of the layer.
Figure 11.26 Retouch on a new layer
to isolate your retouching from the
underlying image.

Figure 11.27 The underlying image is
unaffected under the retouching layer.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.28 By retouching on an
independent layer, you can sample
from all layers, but also vary the opac-

ity of each layer.

Blending Modes
A few blending modes, such as Multiply, are available in
the options bar, but they work a little differently than
usual. Most tools apply their general effect, and then,
once everything is done, they apply the blending mode.
But with the Healing Brush, the blending mode is applied
before Photoshop does the work needed to blend the
patched area with the surrounding image (Figures 11.29
and 11.30).

Figure 11.29 This is how Multiply
mode would usually look for decreas-
ing the hotspot on the model’s cheek.

Figure 11.30 This is how Multiply
mode looks when using the Healing
Brush.

(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

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Spot Healing Brush

The Spot Healing Brush makes quick work of removing
tiny defects in most images. It uses the same concepts as
the Healing Brush and the Patch tool. The only difference
is that it doesn’t require you to choose an area of clean
texture to copy. All you have to do is click and drag over a
defect that needs to be removed; Photoshop analyzes the
surrounding area and attempts to ﬁnd appropriate texture
to borrow. When you click and drag, the area that will be

Figure 11.31 This image is scratched.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

retouched is covered in black. When you release the mouse
button, you’ll see the results of the retouching (Figures

11.31 and 11.32). If the results don’t look good, try drag-
ging over the defect a second time, and Photoshop will
pull from a different area.
If no clean areas of texture surround the defect you’re
attempting to retouch, try using the Create Texture
setting in the options bar (Figure 11.33), which will
cause Photoshop to create its own texture based on the
surrounding image. This setting is especially useful on
images that are scratched or that have a lot of detail in the
surrounding area.
Figure 11.32 The scratch disappears
seamlessly when painted over with
the Spot Healing Brush.
Figure 11.33 The Spot Healing Brush settings in the options bar.

When you’ve reached the point where you think you’re
done working on an image, zoom in to 100% magniﬁca-

Press the Home key (available on
most extended keyboards) to get to
the upper-left corner of the image.
Then use Page Up and Page Down
to move one full screen up or down
(add Shift to move less than one
full screen). Add Command/Ctrl to
Page Up and Page Down to move
one full screen to the right or left.

tion (by double-clicking the Zoom tool) and look for any
tiny defects in the image (such as dust, scratches, or pin-
holes), and ﬁx them with the Spot Healing Brush.
The Patch tool, Healing Brush, and Spot Healing Brush
are useful only when the area that needs to be retouched
should match the color and brightness of the areas that
surround it. When you run across an area that shouldn’t
blend into its surroundings, you’ll have to switch over to

the trusty standby—the Clone Stamp tool.

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Clone Stamp

The Clone Stamp tool copies information from one area of
the image and applies it somewhere else. Before using the
Clone Stamp, however, there is one thing you should know:
All retouching tools use the Brush Presets panel (Figure
11.34). The brush that you use with the Healing Brush isn’t
all that important because the tool will blend your retouch-
ing into the surrounding image, but the brush you choose
for the Clone Stamp doesn’t have those blending capabili-
ties. You have to decide if you want what you’re about to

apply to fade into the image or to have a distinct edge. For
most applications, it helps to have a soft edge on the brush
so you can’t see exactly where you’ve stopped retouching.
The default soft-edged brushes are often too soft, which
can cause the area you retouch to look blurry compared
with the rest of the image. To prevent that from happen-
ing, hold down Shift and press the right bracket key (])
while keeping an eye on the brush preview in the options
bar. Each time you press that key combination, you’ll
change the brush’s hardness setting, in increments of 25%.
The default brushes have a hardness of 100% for hard-
edged brushes, 0% for soft ones; 25% and 50% are better
for retouching with soft-edged brushes.

Cloning Around
After you’ve chosen a brush, hold down the Option/Alt
key and click the area you want to copy. Then move to a
different part of the image and click and drag the mouse
(with no key held). Two cursors appear:
 The crosshair cursor shows the source of Photoshop’s
cloning (Figure 11.35).
 When you apply the Clone Stamp, a circle cursor shows
exactly where it’s being applied (Figure 11.36).
When you move the mouse around, both of the cursors
move in the same direction. As you drag, Photoshop is
constantly copying from the crosshair and pasting into
the circle.

Figure 11.34 The brush determines
how much your retouching work will
blend into the underlying image.

Figure 11.35 Option/Alt-click to
define the spot from which you want
to clone. (©iStockphoto.com/laartist.)

Figure 11.36 The Clone Stamp copies
from under the crosshair and pastes
into the circle.

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Clone Aligned
The Clone Stamp operates in two different modes: Aligned
and Non-aligned (it’s just a simple check box in the options
bar). In Aligned mode, when you apply the Clone Stamp,
it doesn’t matter if you let go of the mouse button and
click again. Each time you let go and click again, the pieces

Unlike the Patch tool and the
Healing Brush, the Clone Stamp
forces you to take full control over
how the retouched image matches
the surrounding image. You have
to think about how the brightness,
color, and texture of the cloned
area will affect the area you plan
on retouching, as well as how the
softness of the brush you choose
will cause that information to blend
into the surrounding image.

that you’re applying line up (Figure 11.37). It’s as if you’re
putting together a puzzle: Once you have all of the pieces
together, it looks like a complete image (Figure 11.38).

Figure 11.37 You can release the
mouse button as many times as you
want with the Aligned check box
turned on, because the pieces of the

Figure 11.38 Once you put all the
pieces together, you’ll end up with a
complete image. (©iStockphoto.com/
vasiliki.)

cloned image line up like puzzle pieces.

Clone Non-Aligned
If you turn off the Aligned check box, it’s a different story.
Apply the Clone Stamp and release the mouse button. The
next time you click, the Clone Stamp resets itself, starting
back at the original point from where it was cloning. For
example, if you click in the middle of someone’s nose, go
up to the forehead, and click and drag, you’ll plant a nose
in the middle of the forehead. Then if you let go, move
over a little bit, and click again, you’ll add a second nose.
But this will happen only if you have the Aligned check
box turned off. For most retouching, leave Aligned turned
on. That way, you don’t have to be careful about letting go
of the mouse button.

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Opacity Settings
Sometimes you don’t want to cover something—you just
want to lessen its impact (Figure 11.39). For example, you

might not want to wipe out a recognizable feature such as a
birthmark, or it’ll be obvious that the image was enhanced.
Lowering the opacity on the Clone Stamp (Figure 11.40)
allows you to paint over an area and partially replace it, so
that the area you’re applying blends with what used to be
in that area.

You can press the number keys on
your keyboard to change opacity.
Pressing 1 gives you 10%, 2 is 20%,
and so on. For 100%, just press
0 (zero).

Figure 11.39 You might want to play
down some recognizable feature.
(©Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com.)

Figure 11.40 By lowering the opacity
of the Clone Stamp, you can reduce
the impact of undesirable features.

Straight Lines
Let’s say you need to remove an image of a woman from
a background containing a straight line (a wall, in Figure
11.41). The section of wall you use to replace the woman
will have to line up perfectly with the sections of wall on
either side of her head. In this kind of situation, move your
cursor until it’s touching the original line (edge of the
wall, in this case). Option/Alt-click; then go to the area

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where you want the new piece of wall to appear and click
where you think it would naturally line up with the other
part of the wall. When you drag, the two cursors will line
up just right, making the line look continuous and straight,
as in Figure 11.42. You can even Shift-click in two spots,
and Photoshop will trace a straight line with the Clone
Stamp between those two areas. Other examples when this
tool is useful: stairs, lampposts, or any object with straight
lines that has been obstructed by another object.

Figure 11.41 On straight lines,
Option/Alt-click when your cursor
touches the line; then click in another

Figure 11.42 If the cursors align, the
lines will remain nice and straight.
(©Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com.)

area that also touches the line.

Patchwork
Sampling from one area and applying it all over the place
will make it pretty obvious that you’ve cloned something,
because shapes are repeated. To ﬁx up the places that
appear patterned, you could Option/Alt-click a random
area around the place you’ve retouched, and then apply
it on top of one of the patterned areas. But watch out—
Photoshop’s round brushes can be a dead giveaway,
because you can easily pick out the areas that you’re trying
to disguise. This is a great time to use one of the odd-
shaped brushes at the bottom of the Brushes panel (Figure
11.43). These brushes provide better cover for areas that
look obviously cloned. Another trick is to apply some noise
to the entire image, which will make any retouching blend

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right into the image. Choose Filter > Noise > Add Noise,
use an amount somewhere around 3, set the Distribution
to Uniform, and turn off the Monochromatic check box.

Figure 11.43 To eliminate repeated
patterns, use the unusual brush
shapes from the bottom of the
Brushes panel.

Lighten/Darken
In most cases, the Healing Brush does an excellent job
because it automatically blends into the surrounding
image, but it does have one weakness: When you use it to
retouch under-eye wrinkles, it sometimes tries to blend
into the eyelashes, which causes the area under the eye
to become too dark. When that’s the case, you can use
the Clone Stamp and sample the area directly below the
wrinkles to clone over the wrinkles. But before you start

retouching that area, experiment with the blending mode
settings from the Mode selection on the options bar.
The Lighten and Darken blending modes are both
very useful when retouching. Suppose you have a light-

Chapter 9, “Enhancements and
Masking,” covers blending modes
in detail. Here we’re just looking at
blending modes we need for the
Clone Stamp.

colored scratch on an old print. You could clone from an
area nearby that has the correct brightness. But before
you apply the cloned material to the scratch, you might
want to set the blending mode to Darken. In this mode,
Photoshop can only darken the picture—never lighten
it (Figures 11.44 and 11.45). When working with the
wrinkles under eyes, try using the Lighten blending mode
and lowering the Opacity setting of the Clone Stamp to
around 40%.

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Figure 11.44 Original image with dust
and scratches all over. (©2008 Dan
Ablan.)

Figure 11.45 Light-colored scratches
at the cement base of the lion statue
are retouched by using the Clone

Stamp set to Darken.

Automatic Sharpening
The automatic sharpening function in some scanners
makes retouching more difﬁcult (Figures 11.46 and 11.47).
If possible, turn off any sharpening settings in your scan-
ning software.

Figure 11.46 Unsharpened image. Figure 11.47 Image sharpened during
a scan.

Cloning Between Documents
With the Clone Stamp, you’re not limited to cloning
from the active document. You can open a second image
and clone from that image as well (Figure 11.48). Make
the second image (the cloning source) active, and then

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Option/Alt-click it. Return to the ﬁrst image to clone from
the point you clicked in the second image.

When you’re cloning between two
documents, both documents must
use the same color mode (RGB or
CMYK).

Figure 11.48 The photo on the right was judged to be the better choice, but the
girl on the right was missing. With the Clone Stamp, we can clone the girl from
the photo on the left. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Clone Source
A handy add-on for the Clone Stamp tool is the Clone
Source panel, which sits in the panel dock (Figure 11.49).
The Clone Source panel offers a number of useful options:
 The ﬁve buttons at the top of the panel let you store
as many as ﬁve different source points, which makes it
easy to switch from one source point to another during
complex clone operations (such as removing a tree
from in front of a building). This saves you the hassle of
having to reset your clone source point repeatedly.
 Using the Source ﬁelds, you can adjust any source point

numerically, making it easy to adjust a point that’s off
by just a pixel or two.

Figure 11.49 The Clone Source panel
provides powerful cloning features.

 The Rotate ﬁeld to the immediate right of the Y ﬁeld
lets you rotate cloned pixels automatically. If you enter
45, for example, the resulting cloned strokes will be
rotated 45 degrees.

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 Above the Rotate ﬁeld are width (W) and height (H)
ﬁelds, which let you scale the source while cloning. If
you unlock the lock box between those two ﬁelds, each
axis will be scaled independently, allowing you to create
a geometric distortion in the result.
 The Show Overlay check box provides a handy visual
reference while cloning. When this box is turned on, a

The Opacity field controls the opac-
ity of the overlaid image—not the
opacity of your cloned strokes.

Figure 11.50 With Show Overlay
turned on in the Clone Source panel,
you can see exactly where the cloned
image will appear. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

While using Vanishing Point, you
can press the X key at any time to
zoom in on the image temporarily,
which can help you to be more
precise when defining a perspective
plane or performing retouching.

semi-opaque copy of the source will be superimposed
over the image (how opaque it is depends on the Opac-
ity value), giving you a preview of what your strokes will
look like given the current offset (Figure 11.50). If you
don’t like the results, adjust the offset until the overlay
shows the cloned results in the desired position.
 The Blending Mode pop-up menu and Invert check
box provide options for improving the visibility of the
overlaid source image.
 The Auto Hide option causes the overlay to disap-
pear automatically when you start painting. When you
release the mouse button, the overlay reappears.

Vanishing Point

All the retouching tools we’ve talked about until now have
had one major shortcoming—they treat the world as ﬂat!
But many images contain objects that appear to change
proportion as they recede from the camera. The solution is
to use Photoshop’s Vanishing Point ﬁlter (Filter > Vanish-
ing Point), which creates different perspective planes in
an image, thus allowing you to paint, retouch, scale, and
distort in perspective.
The street in Figure 11.51 has a consistent width but looks
smaller in the distance due to the effects of perspective. If
you were to use a standard paintbrush tool in Photoshop
and paint an outline of the street, you’d end up with the
shape shown in Figure 11.52. But with the Vanishing Point
ﬁlter, you can establish the street’s perspective and then
paint on the image, getting quite a different result (Figure
11.53). Selections made in Vanishing Point will also con-
form to the perspective planes that make up the image

(Figures 11.54 and 11.55).

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Figure 11.51 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.54 Standard Photoshop
selection. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.52 Standard perspective. Figure 11.53 Vanishing Point
perspective.

Figure 11.55 Selection made with the
Vanishing Point filter.

Defining Planes
Before you can get all this magic to work properly, you have
to educate Vanishing Point about the image by deﬁning
perspective planes. When you ﬁrst open the ﬁlter (Filter
> Vanishing Point), you’ll be presented with a large dia-
log and a small tool panel. Choose the Create Plane tool
(which looks like a tiny grid) and click the four corners of a

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ﬂat surface in the image so Vanishing Point is aware of how
the perspective affects that surface. If Vanishing Point is
having trouble with the plane you’re attempting to deﬁne,
the lines will change color. If the grid turns red, Vanishing
Point can’t ﬁgure out how that shape could possibly be a
ﬂat surface as it relates to the perspective you’re deﬁning
(Figure 11.56). If it turns yellow (Figure 11.57), you have
a grid that could be used, but the results will be less than
ideal. When the grid becomes blue (Figure 11.58), Vanish-
ing Point is saying “all systems go,” and you’re ready to start
painting or retouching the image. If you deﬁne a plane by
clicking the four corners of a small object, you may need
to extend the side handles so the grid covers the entire sur-
face (or at least the area you plan to modify). If you plan to
work with more than one surface in the image, you’ll have
to deﬁne each plane so Vanishing Point knows how those
surfaces relate to each other (Figure 11.59).

Figure 11.56 A red outline is a sign of problems.

Figure 11.58 A blue grid indicates that everything is okay.

Figure 11.57 A yellow grid is usable, but not ideal.

Figure 11.59 Define planes for each surface you intend to

modify. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

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Duplicating Areas
Once the planes are deﬁned, you can use the other tools
from Vanishing Point’s tool panel. If you use the Marquee
tool to make selections, you can hold down Option/Alt
and drag within the selected area to move a duplicate of
the selected area. As you move the selected area, Vanishing
Point scales the image based on the perspective plane on
which you drag (Figures 11.60 and 11.61). But since this
chapter is all about retouching, let’s check out what can be
done with the main retouching tool in Vanishing Point—
the Clone Stamp tool.

Figure 11.60 Sometimes moving
areas produces unrealistic results.

Figure 11.61 Moving areas with the
Vanishing Point filter looks more

realistic.

Cloning in Perspective
Before Vanishing Point came along, Photoshop’s Clone
Stamp tool couldn’t recognize distortions caused by
perspective. Consequently, it created unacceptable results
when used on an image that contained noticeable perspec-
tive distortions. The main problem is that the Clone Stamp
tool is not capable of scaling the cloned area to make it
match the perspective of the surface you’re attempting to
retouch.

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In Figure 11.62, the area being covered by the sign is
primarily a row of larger bricks. In Figure 11.63, the row
of large bricks ends up being patched with bricks that are
much too small to look appropriate. The Clone Stamp tool
in Vanishing Point can do a much better job. To start, use
the Create Plane tool to click the two corners that make

Figure 11.62 This wall is distorted
due to perspective. (©2007
iStockphoto.com/belterz.)

up the left edge of a brick; then click the two corners
that make up the right edge of another brick in the same
row, so Photoshop learns how the bricks are distorted by
perspective (Figure 11.64). Then drag the size handles of
the resulting grid to deﬁne the overall area that needs to
be retouched (Figure 11.65). Once the plane has been
deﬁned, you can use the Clone Stamp tool to retouch
areas, and its results will be scaled to conform to the per-
spective of the image (Figure 11.66).

412

Figure 11.63 Cloned areas are not scaled to the proper size
and therefore don’t match the surrounding image.

Figure 11.65 Expanding the plane to cover the area that
needs to be edited.

Figure 11.64 The initial plane lines up with a row of bricks.

Figure 11.66 The results are scaled to be the appropriate
size.

IV: Creative Techniques

Figure 11.67 The Vanishing Point dialog with the Clone Stamp options visible.
(©2007 iStockphoto.com/urbancow.)

The Vanishing Point Clone Stamp tool incorporates many
of the options that are available in Photoshop’s Healing
Brush, along with a few that are unique to Vanishing Point
(Figure 11.67). For retouching, the settings on the Heal
pop-up menu have particular importance:

 Off. The Hardness setting of the brush is the only thing
that causes retouching to blend into the surrounding
image (Figure 11.68). Use this setting when the area
being retouched is not similar to its surroundings.
 Luminance. Causes the Clone Stamp to copy both color
and texture from the area that’s being cloned; the
brightness of the retouched area is based on the sur-
rounding image (Figure 11.69). Use this setting when
the surface being retouched is unevenly lit, since the

Figure 11.68 Heal set to Off.

Figure 11.69 Heal set to Luminance.

Clone Stamp will match the brightness of the surround-
ing area.
 On. Causes the Clone Stamp to work like the Healing
Brush, copying only texture from the cloned area and
picking up the brightness and color from the area that
surrounds the retouching (Figure 11.70). Use this set-
ting when you want the area being retouched to have
the same texture and color as the surrounding image.
Figure 11.70 Heal set to On.

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Dodge and Burn Tools

The words dodge and burn are taken from a traditional pho-
tographic darkroom. In a darkroom, an enlarger projects

The Spacing setting of your brush
affects how much the image is
changed when using the Dodge
and Burn tools. Higher Spacing
settings affect the image less.

an image onto a sheet of photographic paper. While the
image is being projected, you could put something in the
way of the light source, which would obstruct the light in
such a way that it would hit certain areas less than others—

a technique known as dodging. Or you could add light by
cupping your hands together, creating just a small hole
between them, and allowing the light to concentrate on
a certain area more than others—a technique known as
burning. Using a combination of these two methods, you
can brighten or darken an image. Photoshop reproduces
these techniques with two tools: Dodge (its icon looks like
a lollipop, for dodging the light) and Burn (its icon looks
like a hand with ﬁngers cupped, for burning).

Dodge Tool
Because it can lighten the image, the Dodge tool is handy
when working on photos of people with dark shadows
under their eyes. An important setting for the Dodge tool
is the Range menu in the options bar (Figure 11.71). The
pop-up menu has three choices: Shadows, Midtones, and
Highlights. This menu tells Photoshop which shades of
gray to concentrate on when you paint across the image:
 Shadows. Changes the dark parts of the image. As you
paint across the image, the brush brightens the areas
it touches. As you get into the midtones, it applies less
paint, and it doesn’t change the light parts of the image
much (if at all).
 Midtones. Affects the middle shades of gray—areas that
are about 25% to 75% gray. It shouldn’t change the
shadows or highlights very much. They may change a
little, but only so they can blend into the midtones.
 Highlights. Affects the lightest parts of the image, slowly
blending into the midtones.

Figure 11.71 Dodge tool options bar.

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With the wrong Range setting for the Dodge tool, you
might cause yourself some grief. Let’s say you’re trying to
ﬁx dark areas around the model’s eyes in Figure 11.72, but
the Dodge tool doesn’t seem to be doing the job. After
dozens of tries, you ﬁnally realize that the Range pop-up
menu is set to Highlights instead of Midtones (look at the
eyes in Figures 11.73 and 11.74).
The Exposure setting on the options bar controls how

much brighter the image will become. You can use the
number keys on your keyboard to change this setting.

Color Images
The Dodge tool works exceptionally well on grayscale
images. All you have to do is choose the Range—Shadows,
Midtones, or Highlights—and paint across an area. Unfor-
tunately, the Dodge tool isn’t as slick with color images. It
tends to wash out some of the colors, and in some cases
even change them (Figures 11.75 and 11.76).
One good solution is to duplicate the layer you’re working
on and set the blending mode of the duplicate to Lumi-
nosity before using the Dodge tool. That approach should
maintain the original colors and limit your changes to the

Figure 11.72 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.73 Dodge tool set to
Highlights is not working around the
eye area.

brightness of the image.

Figure 11.74 Dodge tool set to
Midtones.

Figure 11.75 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.76 Area lightened by using
the Dodge tool.

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Figure 11.77 Painting with a light
shade of gray by using the Color
Dodge mode.

Figure 11.78 Area lightened by paint-
ing with a medium shade of gray, using
the Color Dodge blending mode.

Another option is to forgo the Dodge tool and just use
the Paintbrush tool. You can set the Paintbrush tool’s
blending mode to Color Dodge and paint with a bright
shade of gray. But just painting across an image is rather
ridiculous, because all you’re doing is blowing out the
detail (Figure 11.77). To get the Color Dodge technique
to work correctly, paint with a medium to light shade of

Figure 11.79 The original image.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

gray (Figure 11.78), which allows you to create highlights
or to brighten areas. Sometimes this technique works a

little better than using the Dodge tool.

Burn Tool
The Burn tool is designed for darkening areas of an image.
Like the Dodge tool, it has Range and Exposure options,
and works great with grayscale images. If you’re dealing
with a shiny spot on someone’s forehead or nose that
reﬂects the light, you can try to ﬁx the problem with the
Burn tool (compare Figures 11.79 and 11.80).
Figure 11.80 The model’s cheeks,
chin, and forehead are darkened with
the Burn tool.

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IV: Creative Techniques

Color Fixes
Like the Dodge tool, the Burn tool has trouble with color
images (Figures 11.81 and 11.82). Try painting with a
shade of gray (using the Paintbrush tool) and setting the
blending mode to Color Burn, which darkens the image,
making the colors more vivid while leaving the highlights
largely untouched (Figure 11.83).

Figure 11.81 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.82 Image darkened using
the Burn tool.

Figure 11.83 Image darkened by
painting with a shade of gray in Color

Burn mode.
Another technique: Option/Alt-click the New Layer icon
at the bottom of the Layers panel. In the New Layer dialog,
change the Mode setting from Normal to Overlay, turn on
the Fill with Overlay-Neutral Color check box, and then

click OK (Figure 11.84). With the new layer active, use
the Dodge and Burn tools with the Range setting in the

Figure 11.84 Creating a new layer in
Overlay mode.

options bar set to Midtones (Figures 11.85 and 11.86).
This technique allows you to dodge and burn on a separate
layer, with fewer color problems.

As you dodge and burn, especially
when working on skin tones,
turning on the Protect Tones check
box in the options bar (new in
Photoshop CS4) can help prevent
haloing and washed-out colors.

Figure 11.85 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.86 Dodge and Burn used
on a layer set to Overlay mode.

Hold down Option/Alt to switch
temporarily between the Dodge
and Burn tools, so you don’t have to
go back to the Tools panel each time
you want to switch from brighten-
ing to darkening the photo.

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Sponge Tool

Hiding in with the Dodge and Burn tools is the Sponge
tool, which works as if you have a sponge full of bleach,
allowing you to paint across an image and soak up the
color. Or you can do the opposite and intensify the
colors—it’s all determined by the Mode menu setting in
the options bar.
If you choose Desaturate, the Sponge tool tones down the
colors in the area you’re painting. The more you paint
across an area, the closer it becomes to being grayscale.
This technique can be useful when you’d like to make
a product stand out from an otherwise distracting back-
ground (Figure 11.87). With a very low Strength setting, it

Figure 11.87 Background and fore-
ground have been desaturated using
the Sponge tool. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

brightens yellowing teeth.
The Saturate setting intensiﬁes colors as you paint over
them, which is great for giving people rosy cheeks, mak-

ing them stand out from a background (Figure 11.88), or
adding a bit more color to their lips. The Sponge tool is a
subtle, yet very effective tool that often is overlooked, but is
exceedingly powerful for photo touchup work.

In Photoshop CS4, the Sponge tool’s
options bar includes a Vibrance
check box that you can use to
prevent oversaturation of colors
that are already saturated, while
boosting less-saturated colors.

Figure 11.88 The photographer was enhanced using the Sponge tool set
to Saturate, and the area on the left was retouched with the Sponge tool
set to Desaturate. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

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IV: Creative Techniques

Blurring and Sharpening

When you need to blur or sharpen an area, you have two
choices: Select an area and apply a ﬁlter, or use the Blur
and Sharpen tools. Using ﬁlters to blur and sharpen offers
a few advantages over using the tools, including getting a
preview of the image before you commit to the settings,
and having the ability to apply the ﬁlter effect evenly to
the area you’re changing. But occasionally the Blur and
Sharpen tools can really help when working on small areas,
so let’s take a look at how they work and when to use them.
Figure 11.89 Original image. (©2008

Blur Tool
The Blur tool is pretty straightforward, blurring everything
that the cursor passes over as you paint across the image. In
the options bar, the Strength setting determines how much
the Blur tool blurs the image; higher settings blur the image
more. This option can be useful if itty-bitty areas of detail
obstruct the image. You might prefer to use the Gaussian
Blur ﬁlter instead of the Blur tool, however, because Gauss-
ian Blur does a better job of blurring an area evenly.
The Blur tool is good for reducing—not removing—
wrinkles. If you turn the Strength setting way up and paint
across a wrinkle a few times, it begins to disappear, but the
result may not look very realistic (Figures 11.89 and 11.90).
It might look as if you had smeared some Vaseline on the
face. To really do a wrinkle justice, you have to take a closer
look. Wrinkles are made out of two parts: a highlight and a
shadow (light part and dark part). If you paint across that
with the Blur tool, the darker part of the wrinkle will be
lightened and the lightest part will be darkened, so that
they become more similar in shade.
To reduce the impact of a wrinkle without completely get-
ting rid of it (if you wanted to get rid of it, you could use
the Healing Brush tool), turn the Strength setting all the
way up and change the blending mode to either Darken or
Lighten. If the dark area makes the wrinkle most promi-
nent, set the blending mode to Lighten; you might also
need to lower the Strength setting of the Blur tool. Then,
when you paint across the area, the Blur tool will lighten

Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.90 Wrinkles in the forehead
have been blurred using the Blur tool.

Don’t go over the image with the
Blur tool set to Lighten and then
switch over to Darken and go over
it again. That would be the same
as leaving it set to Normal, and you
would be back to Vaseline face.
So use it just once, set to either
Lighten or Darken. Think about
what’s most prominent in the
wrinkle—the light area, or the
dark area? That will indicate which
setting you should use.

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

that wrinkle. Remember that the Blur tool won’t make the
wrinkle disappear—just reduce its impact.
Consider creating a brand-new, empty layer and sampling
layers with the Blur tool. With this technique, Photoshop
can copy the information from the underlying layers, blur
it, and then paste it onto the layer you just created, leav-
ing the underlying layers untouched. You can easily delete
areas or redo them without having to worry about perma-
nently changing the original image.

Lens Blur Filter
To make a large area of an image blurry, try the Lens Blur
ﬁlter. Unlike the standard blur ﬁlters (Blur, Blur More,
and Gaussian Blur), which blur the entire image the same
amount, the Lens Blur ﬁlter varies the amount of blurring,
based on the contents of a grayscale image (Figures 11.91
to 11.93), which you can create by using the Paintbrush
tool. You can specify which shade of gray represents an
area that you want to keep in focus. Photoshop then makes
all the other areas of the image progressively out of focus,
based on how different the surrounding shades of gray are
compared to the one you speciﬁed as the in-focus shade.

Figure 11.91 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.92 Grayscale image used
for blurring.

Figure 11.93 Result of applying the
Lens Blur filter using the grayscale

image shown in Figure 11.92.

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IV: Creative Techniques

The concept is easier to understand when you see this ﬁlter
in action. Create a new empty layer on top of the image
you want to blur. Press D to reset the foreground color to
black, and then use the Paintbrush tool to paint across the
areas you want to keep in focus (Figure 11.94). The soft-
ness of the brush determines how quickly the focus falls
off, so use a really soft-edged brush if you want a smooth
transition from the in-focus areas to the ones that should
be blurred. To create a much softer edge, choose Filter >
Blur > Gaussian Blur after you paint (Figure 11.95). When
you’re done painting, choose Edit > Fill, set the Use pop-
up menu to White, set the Mode pop-up menu to Behind,
and click OK (Figure 11.96). Photoshop ﬁlls the empty
areas of the active layer with white.
Figure 11.94 Paint with black on a
new layer to define the areas that
should remain in focus. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.95 The Gaussian Blur filter Figure 11.96 Use the Fill dialog to fill
the empty parts of the layer with white.

Now we need to get the contents of the active layer to
show up in an alpha channel. Open the Channels panel
(Window > Channels), Command/Ctrl-click the top chan-
nel (it will be called Gray, RGB, or CMYK, depending on
which mode the image uses) to get a selection, and then
click the second icon from the left at the bottom of the
Channels panel to generate the alpha. If necessary, click
the eyeball icon to make this layer visible. To get back
to working on the original image, click back to the Lay-
ers panel or choose Window > Layers, drag the layer you
painted onto the trash icon, choose Select > Deselect, click
the layer you want to blur, and then choose Filter > Blur >
Lens Blur.

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When the Lens Blur dialog appears (Figure 11.97), turn on
the Preview check box and choose Faster for the Preview
method. (The More Accurate setting is just too darn slow.)
In the Source pop-up menu, choose the name of the alpha
channel you created (Alpha 1, unless you renamed it).
Move your mouse over the preview image and click the
area you wanted to keep in focus. Clicking the image sets
the Blur Focal Distance setting, specifying which shade of
gray in the alpha channel will be used to represent an area
that should be in focus (0 = black). If you’d rather have
that area become blurry, turn on the Invert check box. To
compare the blurred version of the image to the original,
toggle the Preview check box off and on.
Now that you have the ﬁlter set up, it’s time to ﬁgure out
how you want the blurry areas of the image to look. The
Radius slider determines just how blurry areas should
become. When you purposefully throw an area out of focus
using a camera (by using a low-aperture setting), you’ll
often see the shape of the aperture in the highlights of the
image (Figure 11.98). The Shape, Blade Curvature, and
Rotation settings attempt to simulate the shape of an aper-
ture in the brightest areas of the image.

Figure 11.97 The Lens Blur dialog. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 11.98 The shape of the camera aperture often
shows up in the brightest areas of the image.

When you blur an image, the brightest areas of the image
often start to look a bit dull (Figures 11.99 and 11.100).
That happens because blurring blends those bright areas
into their surroundings, which makes them become
darker. To compensate, increase the Brightness setting
until the highlights in the image become bright again

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IV: Creative Techniques

(Figure 11.101). The Threshold setting determines which
shades will be brightened. Moving the slider left causes
Photoshop to brighten more shades, whereas moving it
right brightens only the brightest shades in the image.

Figure 11.99 Original image.

Figure 11.100 The highlights look dull after blurring

the image.

Figure 11.101 Adjusting the
Brightness setting brings back
the brightness in the highlights.

Blurring an image usually removes any grain or noise that
was in the image (Figure 11.102). Because the Lens Blur ﬁl-
ter doesn’t blur the entire image, you might end up with a

lot of grain in the in-focus areas of the image and no grain
in the blurred areas. That will make the image look very
unnatural, because the original image contained consistent
grain across the entire image. To add grain into the blurred
areas, experiment with the Noise setting at the bottom of
the Lens Blur dialog. Move the Amount slider right until
the blurry areas have as much grain as the in-focus areas
(Figure 11.103); then switch between the Uniform and
Gaussian options until you determine which one delivers
the best match to the grain of the original photo. Turn on
the Monochromatic check box if the blurred areas look too
colorful when compared to areas that haven’t been blurred.

Figure 11.102 All the grain was
removed when the left side of this
image was blurred.

Figure 11.103 Adjusting the Noise
settings added grain back into the
blurred area.

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Sharpen Tool
The Sharpen tool works in a fashion similar to that of its
relative, the Sharpen ﬁlter. But with this tool you have to
adjust the Strength setting in the options bar to determine
how much to sharpen the image. Be careful, though; if
you turn the Strength setting up too high or paint across
an area too many times, you’ll get some really weird effects
(Figures 11.104 to 11.106).

Figure 11.104 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.105 Sharpened using the
Sharpen tool with a medium Strength
setting.

Figure 11.106 Sharpened using the
Sharpen tool with a high Strength
setting.

Sharpening Reflections
When an image contains glass, metal, or other shiny
objects, it usually contains extremely bright highlights
(known as specular highlights). This usually happens when
light reﬂects directly off one of those very shiny areas,
such as the edge of a drinking glass. These extra-bright
highlights often look rather ﬂat and lifeless after being
adjusted (Figure 11.107). This happens because when-
ever we adjust an image to perform color correction, or
prepare it for printing or multimedia, the brightest areas
of the image usually become 3% or 4% gray (instead of
white). But if you sharpen those areas, you’re going to
brighten them and make them pure white. This will make
them stand out and look more realistic. So any time you
have something shiny, such as buildings, jewelry, glass-
ware, or reﬂected light in people’s eyes, use the Sharpen
tool, bring down the Strength to about 30%, and go over
those areas. That will make them almost pure white; when
you print them, they’ll almost jump off the page (Figures
11.108 and 11.109).

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IV: Creative Techniques

Figure 11.107 Metallic highlights
often look a bit dull after performing

Figure 11.108 The areas covered in red
were sharpened to make them pop.

Figure 11.109 Metallic highlights
sharpened.

color correction. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

The Blur and Sharpen tools make subtle changes. When
you want a bit more radical change, try using the Blur and
Sharpen ﬁlters instead. The Lens Blur ﬁlter gives you the
most control over blurring an image, but at the same time
it’s usually the slowest method for blurring.
Now let’s get away from traditional retouching techniques
and see how we can correct distorted images.

Lens Correction Filter

The Lens Correction ﬁlter (Filter > Distort) is designed to
correct for distortion that’s caused by the camera lens itself,

or by the angle of the lens relative to the subject of the
photo. Let’s start off with a quick tour and then get busy ﬁx-
ing some images. Since this ﬁlter is often used on subjects
that contain a lot of vertical and horizontal lines (such as
buildings), a grid is provided to help you see when you’ve
removed all the distortion from an image (Figure 11.110).
You can toggle the grid on and off with the Show Grid
check box, control the amount of space between grid lines

You can zoom in and scroll around
the image by using the Zoom and
Hand tools in the Lens Correction
dialog, but you might prefer to use
the standard keyboard shortcuts of
holding down Command/Ctrl and
pressing the plus or minus keys,
and using the spacebar to access
the Hand tool temporarily.

with the Size setting, and reposition the grid by using the
Move Grid tool (which looks like a hand on top of a grid).

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Figure 11.110 The Lens Correction
dialog. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

After you’ve experimented with some of the Lens Correc-
tion sliders, toggle the Preview check box to see what the
image looks like before and after the correction has been
applied. Now that you know your way around the dialog,
let’s see what all those sliders can accomplish.

Remove Distortion
The Remove Distortion slider is designed to correct for
barrel or pincushion distortion. That’s when the image
ends up bent out away from the center or bent in toward
the center. You’ll see this effect sometimes with very wide
angle lenses and subjects shot close up, which causes verti-
cal lines to become curved. Move the Remove Distortion
slider, or drag on the image with the Remove Distortion
tool (at upper left in the dialog). The grid is quite useful
when adjusting this slider, since it’s often hard to tell if
something is perfectly straight.

Chromatic Aberration
The Chromatic Aberration sliders are designed to get rid
of color fringing that often appears on the edge of high-
contrast objects (Figures 11.111 and 11.112). This fring-
ing is caused by light being bent as it passes through the
elements that make up a camera lens, which causes the
light to bend and separate much like white light turns into
a rainbow of color when sent through a prism. You won’t
see this fringing on every image, and you’ll only be able to
notice it when you zoom in to 100% view.

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IV: Creative Techniques

Figure 11.111 Original image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 11.112 Result of correcting for chromatic aberration.

Vignette
Moving the Vignette Amount slider toward the right
causes the corners of the image to become brighter,

whereas moving it left darkens the corners. The Midpoint
slider determines how far this brightness change intrudes
toward the middle of the document. Darkened corners
visually direct the viewer’s attention toward the middle of
the image (Figures 11.113 and 11.114).

You might see vignetting when
shooting a Nikon digital system
with lenses that are not rated for
the camera at hand, such as an FX
lens on a DX body.

Figure 11.113 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.114 Darkening the corners
with vignetting.

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Transform
The Angle setting in the Transform section of the Lens
Correction dialog simply rotates the image, which can be
useful if the horizon line isn’t level. Click the tool and then
drag across an area in the image that should be horizontal
or vertical. Photoshop calculates the proper rotation set-
ting needed to straighten the area.
The Vertical Perspective and Horizontal Perspective slid-
ers make converging horizontal or vertical lines parallel
(Figures 11.115 and 11.116). This is useful when you take a
shot of a building by pointing your camera upward toward
the top of the building, which usually causes the top of the
building to appear smaller than the bottom in the result-
ing photograph.

Figure 11.115 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.116 Result of adjusting
vertical perspective.

The Edge setting determines what should be placed in
any transparent areas of the image that are caused by the
distortion correction you’ve applied. Leave the setting set
to Transparency if you prefer to work on the transparent
areas yourself.
Now that you have an idea of how to ﬁx distorted images,
let’s shift gears and start applying creative distortions.

Liquify Filter

The Liquify ﬁlter allows you to pull and push on an
image as if it were printed on Silly Putty. The results you
get out of this ﬁlter will either be obvious (looking like a
reﬂection in a funhouse mirror) or not noticeable to the
untrained eye. It all depends on your intentions. When
you choose Filter > Liquify, you’ll see a dialog that domi-
nates your screen (Figure 11.117). Later you can play
with the more extreme uses of the Liquify tools and con-

jure up special effects to your heart’s content, but for now
let’s use a more real-world approach. The incremental
changes will be subtle, so pay close attention to the cap-
tions for each ﬁgure.

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IV: Creative Techniques

Figure 11.117 The Liquify dialog.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

First let’s consider the tools in the Liquify dialog’s toolbar
at upper left. The ﬁrst tool is called Forward Warp. Click

Forward Warp and paint on the image to push it in the
direction you’re dragging (Figure 11.118). If the results
go a little too far, grab the Reconstruct tool (the next tool
down) and paint across the area that you want to take back
to normal (Figure 11.119). The more you paint across
an area, the closer it becomes to the original (before you
applied the Liquify command).

The Liquify settings vary based
on the image you’re using and
the amount of precision required
to complete each task. The set-
tings suggested here are a good
starting point.

Figure 11.118 Forward Warp gives
this child some cool ears. (©2008

Figure 11.119 Reconstruct decreases
the Spock effect.

Dan Ablan.)

The Twirl Clockwise tool slowly rotates the area inside
the cursor clockwise; hold down Option/Alt to rotate
counterclockwise (Figure 11.120). The Pucker tool
allows you to pull the image in toward the center of your

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

brush (Figure 11.121), and the Bloat tool does the oppo-
site (Figure 11.122).
The Push Left tool acts as though the line you draw is a
bulldozer, and pushes the image away from it on the left

Hold down Option/Alt to switch
temporarily between the Pucker
and Bloat tools.

side (Figure 11.123). Press Option/Alt to move the image
on the right side instead. The Mirror tool ﬂips a portion
of the image horizontally or vertically, depending on the
direction you drag. If you drag downward, you’ll reﬂect the
area to the left of the cursor. Drag up to reﬂect the area
to the right (Figure 11.124). Drag right to reﬂect the area
below the cursor, and drag left to reﬂect the area above.
The Turbulence tool allows you to push and pull on the
image, much like the Warp tool, but adds more of a wavy
look, which can be useful when you’re attempting to create
water ripples and smoke (Figure 11.125).

430

Figure 11.120 Twirl tool used on the
boy’s hair.

Figure 11.123 Push Left tool used on
the child’s mouth.

Figure 11.121 Pucker tool purses the
boy’s mouth.

Figure 11.124 Mirror tool used on his
mouth.

Figure 11.122 Bloat tool at work on
the eyes.

Figure 11.125 Turbulence tool used
on his hair.

IV: Creative Techniques

Now that you have an idea of what each tool does, let’s
explore the options at upper right in the Liquify dialog:
 Brush Size: There is no Brushes panel available to
change the size of your brush in the Liquify dialog. The
size of the brush is determined by the number entered
in the Brush Size ﬁeld at upper right in the dialog. You
can use the bracket keys (][) to change this setting in
small increments, or press Shift with them to change
the size in larger increments.
 Brush Density: This setting determines how thick the
center of the brush is before it starts to fade out and
affect the image less. Imagine that you’re warping the
image with your ﬁnger. You could think of this setting
as how pointy your ﬁnger is when you’re using it to
warp the image (Figures 11.126 to 11.128). Low settings
cause a radical change in a small area and then fade
out to the edge of the brush, whereas higher settings
spread the radical change into a wider area before it
fades out to the edge of the brush.

Figure 11.126 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.127 Image warped using a
low Brush Density setting.

Figure 11.128 Image warped using a
high Brush Density setting.

 Brush Pressure: For all of these tools, the Brush
Pressure setting determines how radical a change
you’ll make when you paint across the image. Think
of the Brush Pressure setting as determining how
hard you’re pushing with your ﬁnger. The harder you
push, the more of the image you’ll move with each

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

paint stroke (Figures 11.129 to 11.131). If you have a
pressure-sensitive graphics tablet, turn on the Stylus
Pressure check box to make Photoshop pay attention
to how much pressure you’re using with the pen. With
this option turned on, the Brush Pressure setting is
determined by how hard you press down on the graph-
ics tablet.

Figure 11.129 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.130 Warped using a
medium Brush Pressure setting.

Figure 11.131 Warped using a high
Brush Pressure setting.

 Brush Rate: This setting is available only with the
Reconstruct, Twirl, Pucker, Bloat, and Turbulence
tools. It determines how much of a change you’ll make
when the mouse is held stationary with the mouse
button held down. The higher the setting, the more
quickly the image will change when you pause the
mouse on top of an area (Figures 11.132 to 11.134).
This setting has no effect on what happens when the
mouse is in motion.

432

Figure 11.132 Original image. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.133 Bloated for three sec-
onds using a low Brush Rate setting.

Figure 11.134 Bloated for three sec-
onds using a high Brush Rate setting.

IV: Creative Techniques

Figure 11.135 Turbulence tool applied
to the baby’s hair, with a low Turbulent
Jitter setting. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.136 High Turbulent Jitter
setting.

Figure 11.137 When creating an
image like this one, experiment with
the reconstruction modes.

 Turbulent Jitter: This setting determines how smooth
a result you’ll get with the Turbulence tool (it doesn’t
affect the other tools). Low settings produce a
smoother distortion; higher settings produce a more
random distortion (Figures 11.135 and 11.136).
 Reconstruct Mode: This pop-up menu determines
how the Reconstruct tool attempts to bring the image
back to its original state. You’ll get radically different
results depending on which setting you choose. The
vast majority of the time you’ll use the Revert setting;
in most cases, you’ll only change this setting when you
want a creative image (Figure 11.137).
You can mask an area to prevent it from changing. The
Freeze Mask tool (located under the distortion tools on the
left side of the dialog) applies a red overlay on the image
to indicate which areas have been masked (Figure 11.138).
The Freeze Mask tool also uses the Brush Density and
Brush Pressure settings, which means that you can partially
mask an area to make it change less than the unmasked

areas. (For example, 50% masked areas will change half as
much as unmasked areas when you paint over them.) Areas
that are partially masked appear with a more transparent

Figure 11.138 The red overlay indi-
cates an area that has been masked.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

red overlay. If you’d rather not see the overlay, turn off the
Show Mask check box. To unmask an area, use the Thaw
Mask tool to remove some of the red overlay, or click None
in the Mask Options area to unmask the entire image. The
Freeze Mask and Thaw Mask options are great when used
with the Show Backdrop setting, which allows you to see
through the transparent areas of a layer to the underlying
layers. This way, you can see exactly how the image lines up
with the rest of the document (Figure 11.139).

Figure 11.139 Using the Show Back-
drop options, you can see the original
image beneath your Liquify changes.
(©2008 Dan Ablan.)

After you play around in this dialog, it may be difﬁcult to
determine the exact areas that have changed in the image.
To see a different view of the changes you’ve made, select
the Show Mesh check box (Figure 11.140). You might also
want to turn off the Show Image check box so you can get
a clear view of the mesh (Figure 11.141). You can control
the size and color of the mesh, which can help make the
changes more noticeable when viewed at the same time as
the image. You can still use all the Liquify tools while the
mesh is visible.

434

Figure 11.140 An image with the mesh visible. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.141 Viewing the mesh with the image hidden.

IV: Creative Techniques

Real-World Retouching with Liquify
Let’s explore how you might use the Liquify tools when
retouching an image. When you’re trying each of these
techniques, be extra careful not to go too far with your dis-
tortions; otherwise, the changes will become obvious. The
idea is to change the image so that it looks better than the
original, without changing it so much that anyone would
notice the tampering.

Retouching Eyes
In the world of fashion, it’s not unusual to enlarge a
model’s eyes to draw attention to that part of his or her
face. Use the Freeze Mask tool to mask off the surround-
ing areas of the eye that would probably look wrong if
they were distorted. That usually includes the eyebrows,
nose, and sometimes the sides of the head (Figure 11.142).
Switch to the Bloat tool, move the mouse over one of the
eyes, place the crosshair in the pupil, and adjust the Brush
Size setting (by pressing the bracket keys) until the brush is
just larger than the perimeter of the eye (Figure 11.143).

Figure 11.142 Mask off the areas that you don’t want to
distort. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

Figure 11.143 Use a brush that’s slightly wider than
the eye.

Set Brush Density to 100; otherwise, you’ll end up enlarg-
ing the center of the eye more than the rest of the eye.
While you’re at it, change Brush Rate to a low setting such
as 20 so that you don’t have to be overly careful about how

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

long to hold down the mouse button to get the proper
change in the image. Now that you have everything set up
properly, center your cursor on the pupil and then press
the mouse button until the eye looks slightly larger—about
a second should do it (Figure 11.144). Repeat the process
on the other eye, holding down the mouse button for the
same amount of time.
You can also use Liquify to open eyes that are partially shut
(Figure 11.145). Liquify isn’t always the best for this kind
of work, however; it’s better to work with multiple photos

Figure 11.144 The final image with slightly larger
eyes.

so that you can copy an open eye from one photo, paste it
onto a closed eye in another image, and use the Healing
Brush to blend in the edges. But for those times when you

have only one shot to use, the Bloat and Warp tools can
help pry open an eye (Figure 11.146).

Figure 11.145 Original image. (©2008 Dan Ablan.) Figure 11.146 First try at opening an eye.

Start by choosing the Bloat tool. Set Brush Size so that the
brush is about 3/4 of the width of the eye, set Brush Den-
sity to a low setting (somewhere around 20 should work)
so that you mainly scale the center of the eye, and set the
Brush Rate to 20. Now, click the center of the pupil four
or ﬁve times so that it starts to enlarge (Figure 11.147). To
get the rest of the eye to look natural, make a few single
clicks just to the right and left of the center of the eye

436

IV: Creative Techniques

(Figure 11.148). Finally, switch to the Warp tool, bring up
the Brush Density setting to around 50, and set the Brush
Pressure to around 60. Place the crosshair in the center of
the brush on the eyelid and drag up or down to reshape it
(Figure 11.149). Keep tweaking the image until each eye
has the proper shape. If you mess up and create a ghoul-
ish rendition of an eye, switch to the Reconstruct tool,
bring down the Brush Pressure and Brush Rate settings to
around 20, and then click or paint across the eye to see if
you can smooth it out.

Figure 11.147 Click in the center of the eye a few times

Figure 11.148 Click the sides to even out the eye.

to pry it open.

Figure 11.149 Reshape the eyelid with the Warp tool
if necessary.

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Retouching Mouths
Let’s use the Warp tool to transform a straight mouth into
a smiling one. Start by choosing the Warp tool. Change the
Brush Size setting until you get a brush about half the width
of the mouth, set the Brush Density to 50, and set the Brush
Pressure to 50 or more. Next, move your mouse so that the
crosshair is just below the right edge of the mouth, and drag
upward and to the side slightly to move the corner of the
mouth up and out (Figure 11.150). Repeat this process on

When adding smiles, don’t forget
the cheeks. There’s more to a smile
than just an upward turn of the
mouth.

the left side of the mouth. Change the Brush Size setting to
get a brush slightly smaller than the one you just used, place
the crosshair on the top edge of the lips (centered horizon-
tally), and drag down a short distance (Figure 11.151).

Figure 11.150 Use the Warp tool to push the side of the

Figure 11.151 Pull the middle of the lip down slightly.

mouth up and out. (©2008 Dan Ablan.)

It takes some practice to get an acceptable result. If you
mess up, paint across the area with the Reconstruct tool to
get it closer to the original, or click the Restore All button
to start over.

Digital Liposuction
If you need to nip or tuck some bulging ﬂesh, do it by mas-
tering the Warp, Pucker, and Push Left tools. When work-
ing on waistlines, use the Warp tool with a largish brush,
a medium Brush Density setting (around 50), and a high
Brush Pressure (around 80). Drag the background toward
the waist (Figures 11.152 and 11.153).

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IV: Creative Techniques

Figure 11.152 The original image
with the arm masked so it won’t shift.
(©Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com.)

Figure 11.153 Result of warping the
waist with a large brush.

Figure 11.154 There’s no need to
mask when using the Push Left tool;
just use a downward stroke with the
crosshair on the edge that you want

If you need to move a large area, consider using the Push
tool. Choose a large brush, set the Brush Density to 100,
and use a very low Brush Pressure (around 10). Position
your cursor so that the crosshair just touches the edge you
need to move, and drag to push the ﬂesh in one direction
(Figures 11.154 and 11.155). Drag straight down if you
need to push the skin toward the right of your cursor; hold
down Option/Alt if you need to move the skin in the oppo-
site direction. If the background gets distorted too much,
click OK in the Liquify dialog and use the Clone Stamp
tool to replace the distorted background with something
that looks more appropriate.

Content-Aware Scaling

to push.

Figure 11.155 Result of pushing quite

a bit of flesh, using the Push Left tool.
Photoshop CS4 has introduced some new magic in the
form of a scale tool. The Content-Aware Scale command
allows you to take out unwanted spaces with the click and
drag of a mouse. Every once in a while, you might have an
image where the subjects aren’t as close together as you’d
like (Figure 11.156). Make sure that the image is not the
Background layer. (If it is, duplicate it, or double-click it to

make it an editable layer.) Choose Edit > Content-Aware
Scale. Handles appear around the image, like those you
would see with a normal scaling operation. Click and drag.

Figure 11.156 Sometimes your
subjects are too far apart. (©2008
Dan Ablan.)

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Chapter 11 Retouching Techniques

Figure 11.157 shows the result: In this example, the three
ﬁgures are now closer together, with the original layer
shown beneath.
Content-aware scaling is like magic, but it’s not going to
solve all your problems. Some images work better than oth-
ers, such as a person’s head against a blue sky. You’ll have
to experiment with the options, and see what works best
for your images.
Figure 11.157 The Content-Aware Scale command

allows you to remove some of the unneeded green
space between the three figures.

The Next Step

We’ve reached the end of the book, and we’ve covered
all the tools you’ll need to become a bona ﬁde “photo
doctor.” Bear in mind that you don’t need to limit yourself
to working with photographs; the tools and techniques
we’ve covered here can be used for non-photographic
images as well.
As with everything else in Photoshop CS4, once you’ve
gone around the block with these tools a few times, you’ll
probably think of a dozen other things you can do with
them. From here, the learning doesn’t stop. Head on over
to the ofﬁcial book page at www.danablan.com/photoshop
and view the Chapter 12 video, “Workﬂow,” which shows
image capture, color correction, global toning, and more.
Thanks to 3D Garage.com, you’ll also ﬁnd ﬁve more bonus
videos covering line art scanning, channels, shadows, type
and background effects, and resolution settings.