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Photograph Editing - Removing Blemishes

artcreations4u | Sep 22, 2009 |

1 Comments | Rating: 1

Removing Blemishes from photos is very easy if you know how. Photo editing tools all have functionality to do this and the principles are all the same. For this example, I've used Adobe Photoshop CS4...

Things You Will Need

Adobe Photoshop CS* or Elements

Tools used:

Spot Healing Tool

Spot Removal Tool

The tools are very similar and borrow functionality from one another.

Step 1

The process being selecting of an area within the image that is similar in pixel colour/tone to the area with the blemish. This can be done manually (Healing brush) or automatically (Spot healing) if you feel the software can do a better job. Any background blemishes, especially on surfaces such as sand, are taken care of best automatically in my experience....no-one can ever tell. The image has a number of blemishes (top left). Above the boys head is an orange piece of rubbish for instance.

Step 2

Select the Spot Removal Brush tool from the left hand menu.

Step 3

Alter the size of the brush to just cover the blemish, zoom in for accuracy if you have to and use your left mouse button to execute.

Step 4

The blemish should now be gone, having been cloned from another area of the image.

Step 5

If you find the automatic method isn't quite accurate enough, try the manual way.

On the same image, a green blemish appears to the left of the original blemish.

Step 6

Select the Healing Brush tool

Step 7

Whilst pressing the 'Alt' key, select a source point to 'clone' to cover the blemish. Once selected, the cloned image will be ever present within the healing brush until placed over the target and executed using the left mouse button.
Which way is best? It all depends on the image and the blemish but either way is easier than going back to the beach to retake the photo!