Question on spot healing brush tool

I think that I am missing a few points with this one.

At present I am working my way through several hundred slides from the early 60's to, say, mid 70's with all the problems they pose when never having been properly handled or particularly well stored.

For most of the repairs, once levels, colours etc have been sorted as far as possible, a quick hit on the spots and blemishes and its cracked.

However, sometimes the result is an area of enlarged pixels with a linier sort of cast to it.

This seems a bit random and can occur in one part of a picture whist others have cleaned up with no problem.

Can any kind person explain to me what's happening??

TIA

Keith J Chesworth
www.boilerbill.com - CV - now needing a job!!
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.amerseyferry.co.uk

"BoilerBill" wrote in message

I think that I am missing a few points with this one.

At present I am working my way through several hundred slides from the early 60's to, say, mid 70's with all the problems they pose when never having been properly handled or particularly well stored.
For most of the repairs, once levels, colours etc have been sorted as far as possible, a quick hit on the spots and blemishes and its cracked.

However, sometimes the result is an area of enlarged pixels with a linier sort of cast to it.

This seems a bit random and can occur in one part of a picture whist others have cleaned up with no problem.

Can any kind person explain to me what's happening??

TIA

the healing tool pulls pixels into a swirl as far as I can tell**, which works well in areas of solid or similar color, for let's say fixing a blemish.

If you are near the edge of a contrasty color it will pull that into it, so either make a selection so it won't change those areas or re-sample the tool in an alignment with the stripe or line, moving in the same direction as you go...not sure I am 'splaining this right

sometimes it just pisses me off and I switch back to the clone tool, often a better choice for certain areas.

** I am sure someone on here will give a more tech explanation

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:46:25 -0400, "KatWoman" wrote:
snip

the healing tool pulls pixels into a swirl as far as I can tell**, which works well in areas of solid or similar color, for let's say fixing a blemish.

If you are near the edge of a contrasty color it will pull that into it, so either make a selection so it won't change those areas or re-sample the tool in an alignment with the stripe or line, moving in the same direction as you go...not sure I am 'splaining this right

sometimes it just pisses me off and I switch back to the clone tool, often a better choice for certain areas.

** I am sure someone on here will give a more tech explanation

Thanks for the reply. Frankly thats what I'm doing, most of my repair work has traditionally been done with either the clone or paint brush.

It is only recently that age is telling and I'm looking for easier ways, such as the spot healing brush but it is confusing the hell out of me.

Lately I've been doing these slides and having to remove all manner of imperfections picked up over the decades. Doing something like sky, I can be banging on with great gusto literally knocking spots off the job and then in another I start to get these linier residues of what look like big pixels. Weird

K
www.boilerbill.com - CV - now needing a job!!
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.amerseyferry.co.uk

"BoilerBill" schreef in bericht

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:46:25 -0400, "KatWoman" wrote:
snip

the healing tool pulls pixels into a swirl as far as I can tell**, which works well in areas of solid or similar color, for let's say fixing a blemish.

If you are near the edge of a contrasty color it will pull that into it, so either make a selection so it won't change those areas or re-sample the tool in an alignment with the stripe or line, moving in the same direction as you go...not sure I am 'splaining this right

sometimes it just pisses me off and I switch back to the clone tool, often a
better choice for certain areas.

** I am sure someone on here will give a more tech explanation

Thanks for the reply. Frankly thats what I'm doing, most of my repair work has traditionally been done with either the clone or paint brush.
It is only recently that age is telling and I'm looking for easier ways, such as the spot healing brush but it is confusing the hell out of me.

Lately I've been doing these slides and having to remove all manner of imperfections picked up over the decades. Doing something like sky, I can be banging on with great gusto literally knocking spots off the job and then in another I start to get these linier residues of what look like big pixels. Weird

K
www.boilerbill.com - CV - now needing a job!!
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.amerseyferry.co.uk

General rule is to use the healing/patch tools on fairly even areas, not too close to edges.
The clone tool takes care of that.
I almost always use the spot healing, healing, patch (for larger areas) and the clone tool in combination.
I use the keyboard shortcuts J and S for rapid switching between the tools. This way I can also press TAB for more workspace.
Practise, after a while your eye detects what tool to use to get the job done.
There's always the undo function, if you make a mistake.

H.

"HTech" wrote in message

"BoilerBill" schreef in bericht

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:46:25 -0400, "KatWoman" wrote:
snip

the healing tool pulls pixels into a swirl as far as I can tell**, which works well in areas of solid or similar color, for let's say fixing a blemish.

If you are near the edge of a contrasty color it will pull that into it, so either make a selection so it won't change those areas or re-sample the
tool in an alignment with the stripe or line, moving in the same direction
as you go...not sure I am 'splaining this right

sometimes it just pisses me off and I switch back to the clone tool, often a
better choice for certain areas.

** I am sure someone on here will give a more tech explanation

Thanks for the reply. Frankly thats what I'm doing, most of my repair work has traditionally been done with either the clone or paint brush.
It is only recently that age is telling and I'm looking for easier ways, such as the spot healing brush but it is confusing the hell out of me.

Lately I've been doing these slides and having to remove all manner of imperfections picked up over the decades. Doing something like sky, I can be banging on with great gusto literally knocking spots off the job and then in another I start to get these linier residues of what look like big pixels. Weird

K
www.boilerbill.com - CV - now needing a job!!
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.amerseyferry.co.uk

General rule is to use the healing/patch tools on fairly even areas, not too close to edges.
The clone tool takes care of that.
I almost always use the spot healing, healing, patch (for larger areas) and the clone tool in combination.
I use the keyboard shortcuts J and S for rapid switching between the tools. This way I can also press TAB for more workspace. Practise, after a while your eye detects what tool to use to get the job done.
There's always the undo function, if you make a mistake.

Old habits die hard
before we had so many history steps

I leave my orig on the background layer
I work on a duplicate layer above it for retouching

If you make a real mess and want to undue it after more than 20 steps I erase it out of the retouch layer
make another background dupe and layer>merge down
(you could also copy/paste back areas from the original)

I also found out (on this NG) you can change the history option to delete steps out of order without losing all the ones below.

"KatWoman" schreef in bericht

"HTech" wrote in message

"BoilerBill" schreef in bericht

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:46:25 -0400, "KatWoman" wrote:
snip

the healing tool pulls pixels into a swirl as far as I can tell**, which works well in areas of solid or similar color, for let's say fixing a blemish.

If you are near the edge of a contrasty color it will pull that into it, so either make a selection so it won't change those areas or re-sample the
tool in an alignment with the stripe or line, moving in the same direction
as you go...not sure I am 'splaining this right

sometimes it just pisses me off and I switch back to the clone tool, often a
better choice for certain areas.

** I am sure someone on here will give a more tech explanation

Thanks for the reply. Frankly thats what I'm doing, most of my repair work has traditionally been done with either the clone or paint brush.
It is only recently that age is telling and I'm looking for easier ways, such as the spot healing brush but it is confusing the hell out of me.

Lately I've been doing these slides and having to remove all manner of imperfections picked up over the decades. Doing something like sky, I can be banging on with great gusto literally knocking spots off the job and then in another I start to get these linier residues of what look like big pixels. Weird

K
www.boilerbill.com - CV - now needing a job!!
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.amerseyferry.co.uk

General rule is to use the healing/patch tools on fairly even areas, not too close to edges.
The clone tool takes care of that.
I almost always use the spot healing, healing, patch (for larger areas) and the clone tool in combination.
I use the keyboard shortcuts J and S for rapid switching between the tools. This way I can also press TAB for more workspace. Practise, after a while your eye detects what tool to use to get the job done.
There's always the undo function, if you make a mistake.

Old habits die hard
before we had so many history steps

I leave my orig on the background layer
I work on a duplicate layer above it for retouching

If you make a real mess and want to undue it after more than 20 steps I erase it out of the retouch layer
make another background dupe and layer>merge down
(you could also copy/paste back areas from the original)
I also found out (on this NG) you can change the history option to delete steps out of order without losing all the ones below.

You can change the number of history steps in the preferences. Mine are set to 50 as I love trying-out things, which don't always work :-) But for cloning, I usually work on a fresh layer with 'all layers' checked in the clonetool options. Works with healing too. Pity it doesn't work with the patchtool.
The first thing I do when I open an image is to press CTRL-J, it's become natural. Any changes that are really destructive can then be recovered by the history brush targetted on the first snapshot.

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:20:13 GMT, "HTech"
wrote:

"KatWoman" schreef in bericht

"HTech" wrote in message

"BoilerBill" schreef in bericht

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:46:25 -0400, "KatWoman" wrote:
snip

snip

General rule is to use the healing/patch tools on fairly even areas, not too close to edges.
The clone tool takes care of that.
I almost always use the spot healing, healing, patch (for larger areas) and the clone tool in combination.
I use the keyboard shortcuts J and S for rapid switching between the tools. This way I can also press TAB for more workspace. Practise, after a while your eye detects what tool to use to get the job done.
There's always the undo function, if you make a mistake.

Old habits die hard
before we had so many history steps

I leave my orig on the background layer
I work on a duplicate layer above it for retouching

If you make a real mess and want to undue it after more than 20 steps I erase it out of the retouch layer
make another background dupe and layer>merge down
(you could also copy/paste back areas from the original)
I also found out (on this NG) you can change the history option to delete steps out of order without losing all the ones below.

You can change the number of history steps in the preferences. Mine are set to 50 as I love trying-out things, which don't always work :-) But for cloning, I usually work on a fresh layer with 'all layers' checked in the clonetool options. Works with healing too. Pity it doesn't work with the patchtool.
The first thing I do when I open an image is to press CTRL-J, it's become natural. Any changes that are really destructive can then be recovered by the history brush targetted on the first snapshot.

Thanks for the replies.

Must admit that the comment about old habits strikes right home. All through my years trial and error learning I never could get the idea of layers. Only having some time recently and actually getting to do some reading on the program has the light started to glimmer.

Still find myself working direct on the background and just scrubbing and reloading it when I've screwed up big time.

K
www.boilerbill.com - CV - now needing a job!!
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.amerseyferry.co.uk

"BoilerBill" wrote in message

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:20:13 GMT, "HTech"
wrote:

"KatWoman" schreef in bericht

"HTech" wrote in message

"BoilerBill" schreef in bericht

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 16:46:25 -0400, "KatWoman" wrote:
snip

snip

General rule is to use the healing/patch tools on fairly even areas, not
too close to edges.
The clone tool takes care of that.
I almost always use the spot healing, healing, patch (for larger areas) and the clone tool in combination.
I use the keyboard shortcuts J and S for rapid switching between the tools. This way I can also press TAB for more workspace. Practise, after a while your eye detects what tool to use to get the job
done.
There's always the undo function, if you make a mistake.

Old habits die hard
before we had so many history steps

I leave my orig on the background layer
I work on a duplicate layer above it for retouching

If you make a real mess and want to undue it after more than 20 steps I erase it out of the retouch layer
make another background dupe and layer>merge down
(you could also copy/paste back areas from the original)
I also found out (on this NG) you can change the history option to delete
steps out of order without losing all the ones below.

You can change the number of history steps in the preferences. Mine are set to 50 as I love trying-out things, which don't always work :-)
But for cloning, I usually work on a fresh layer with 'all layers' checked in the clonetool options. Works with healing too. Pity it doesn't work with
the patchtool.
The first thing I do when I open an image is to press CTRL-J, it's become natural. Any changes that are really destructive can then be recovered by the history brush targetted on the first snapshot.

Thanks for the replies.

Must admit that the comment about old habits strikes right home. All through my years trial and error learning I never could get the idea of layers. Only having some time recently and actually getting to do some reading on the program has the light started to glimmer.
Still find myself working direct on the background and just scrubbing and reloading it when I've screwed up big time.

K

you can always copy your orignal and paste it in as a dupe layer layers are like the best ever
and maybe the most important feature of PS
what a waste of good features in PS

just drag your layer holding mouse down,
to the little folded corner paper icon

to see the layer below use click the eyeball
I love to go back and forth to see the changes at different magnification

or ctrl J