PHOTOSHOP TECHNIQUE: Healing Brush and Clone Tool.

The Healing Brush and Clone Tools are among the easiest and most important tools you can learn in Photoshop. Whether you’re removing unsightly sensor dust spots or cleaning up unwanted details in your images, a little time fiddling with the either of these tools can benefit photographers of all levels.

So you’ve shot an image, and there’s something in the shot that you’d rather not be there. This might be a person, a piece of rubbish or simply some dust that is on your sensor.

Whatever the situation, if you’ve just got small areas to clean up and there’s enough detail around the spot you can sample, then you should use either the Healing Brush or Clone Tool.

The Clone Tool was one of the earliest Photoshop skills I picked up for primarily removing dust from images scanned from negatives. The simplicity of it and the results you can get are excellent for the time it will take you to clean up.

The Healing Brush is very similar to the Clone Tool in that both sample a ‘clean’ area of your image and cover the offending area with this sample. The Healing Brush however, rather than just covering the area with the sample, actually works to match texture and tone around your flaw, thus giving quicker and more accurate results in one swipe.

Take the following image:







As we can see there are some dust spots (circled) in the sky that need to be removed.

To remove these spots I will use the Healing Brush. (The method shown here is exactly the same as that of the Clone Tool).

Just for good measure I’ll remove the piece of rubbish in the foreground to show that textures and tones are matched pretty accurately.

Note: always carry out this procedure with the highest resolution image you have.

Step 1:
Locate the first area you want to clean up. Now select the Healing Brush tool and choose a brush size slightly smaller than your flawed area.


Step 2:
Now we need to take a sample with which to cover the offending mark.

To do this, hold your brush over the area you wish to sample and hold the Alt key. You will see crosshairs appear (as screenshot) in your brush shape. This shows the area you will be sampling. When you’re happy with the area to use as a sample, click your mouse while still holding the Alt key. You have now selected the area to sample.



Step 3:
The cover up. After selecting your sample area you need to start to cover up. Move your cursor over the flaw and click and drag your mouse over the area so you have covered the entire flaw. On releasing your mouse button, the Healing Brush will use it’s processing power to match texture as closely as it can and you should be left with a clean area where once there was a flaw.


before


after

Step 4:
Repeat step 3 until all your flaws are removed.

Result:
After sampling and covering all your areas, you should be left with an image that now looks clean and imperfection free.



A quick fix for those unsightly marks. The best thing is that this technique can be invaluable in clearing flaws and wrinkles in portraits, landscapes, product shots. The list goes on.

---
Tip: start out simple. Once you've got the hang of the basics, then you can move on to more advanced editing.