Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [188]
Figure 8.8 This shows the spot healing brush Options bar with the Mode options menu made visible.
Figure 8.7 In Proximity Match mode, the spot healing brush works by searching automatically to find the best pixels to sample from to carry out a repair, but if you drag with the spot healing brush it uses the direction of the drag as the source for the most suitable texture to sample from. By dragging with the tool you can give the spot healing brush a better clue as to where to sample from.
The Create Texture mode works in a slightly different fashion. The spot healing tool reads in the data that surrounds the area you are attempting to repair. As you do this it generates a texture pattern from the sampled data. So the main difference is that Proximity Match is repairing and blending with actual pixels, while Create Texture is repairing and blending with a texture pattern that has been generated on-the-fly. The Content-Aware mode is discussed later on pages 430–431.
Clone and healing sample options
The clone sample options (Figure 8.9) allow you to choose how the pixels are sampled when you use the clone stamp or healing brush tools. ‘Current Layer’ samples the contents of the current layer only and ignores all other layers. The ‘Current & Below’ option samples the current layer and visible layers below (ignoring the layers above it), while the ‘All Layers’ option samples all visible layers in the layer stack, including those above the current layer. If the Ignore adjustment layers button (circled) is turned on, Photoshop ignores the effect any adjustment layers are having on the image (see sidebar). Meanwhile, the spot healing brush only has the ‘Sample All Layers’ option in the tool Options bar to check or uncheck.
Figure 8.9 The layer sample options allow you to carry out all your clone stamp and healing brush work to an empty new layer. The advantage of this is that you can keep all your retouching work separate and leave the original Background layer untouched. In this example, the ‘All Layers’ option allowed me to sample from layers above and below, but because the ‘Ignore Adjustment Layers’ option was checked (circled above), Photoshop ignored the effect any adjustment layers had on the sampled pixels.Client: Eylure. Model: Susannah @ Storm
Ignore adjustment layers
When ‘Ignore Adjustment Layers’ is switched on, Photoshop ignores the effect any adjustment layers might have when cloning the visible pixels. This is mainly used to prevent adjustment layers above the layer you are working on from affecting the retouching carried out on a layer below when the ‘All Layers’ sample option has been selected. Prior to this you would have had to temporarily hide such adjustment layers before carrying out the retouching.
Patch tool
The patch tool uses the same algorithm as the healing brush to carry out its blend calculations, except the patch tool uses selection-defined areas instead of a brush. When the patch tool is selected, it initially operates in a lasso selection mode that can be used to define the area to ‘patch from’ or ‘patch to’ (for example, you can hold down the key to temporarily convert the tool to become a polygonal lasso tool with which to draw straight line selection edges). It so happens you don't actually need the patch tool to define the selection; any selection tool or selection method can be used when preparing a patch selection. Once you have made the selection, select the patch tool to proceed to the next stage. Unlike the healing brushes, the patch tool has to work with either