Photoshop is an amazing tool for photo editing.
That fact remains undisputed!
Particularly if you want to take a photograph and figure out how to get rid of blackheads in a hurry.
Here’s a small (and extremely gross example).
There are two choices when dealing with retouching like this – well actually there are a few more, but these are the most common treatments of blemish removal in retouching, and also the easiest.
First choice up is the healing tool, useful for when the blemish is quite small.
Here is where you can find the healing tool in CS4 (also found in this general area in CS, CS2 and 3). The default setting is for it to be docked to the left hand side of your workspace panel either in a single column or a shorter, double column.
Here is the result of using the healing tool directly onto the blemish, using about 5 clicks of it around the image.
Several smaller clicks works much better than trying to cover the blemish with one large click.
It’s not perfect – but with a well practiced hand you can make vast improvements on portrait photos using this technique.
The other method commonly used is the Clone Stamp tool.
The Clone stamp tool is best used when the area surrounding the blemish is of good quality, and you want to reproduce (clone) this skin over the blemished area to make the blemish disappear.
Here is where you will find the clone stamp tool in Photoshop versons CS through CS4…
The clone stamp tool sits along with the Clone pattern tool so make sure you have the correct one selected.
Holding down the button will open up the two buttons so that you can ensure you have the correct one for the tool at hand.
CS4 asks that you click a selection point from where it will clone the information, and you do this by holding down the ALT key (on a Mac) and then selecting the source from where you will begin cloning.
It is a wise idea to select from an area that has the closest similar coloring to the area you are going to clone over, so if you select an area too far away, the colors will be too different and you may make it look even worse.
In this case, the skin surrounding the blemish wasn’t great either, so the result of using the clone stamp tool was less successful than the healing tool, but often a combination of the two gives you the best result.
What techniques have you tried for removing skin blemishes using Photoshop?
Do you have a better technique that you’d like to share with us?
I’d love to hear from any magazine based celebrity retouchers about their preferred techniques to share with our readers.
Pop me an email or leave a comment below.
