subject: Mastering Photoshop CS5 – New Healing Features [print this page] Adobe recently released Photoshop CS5, the latest version of Photoshop, which can do so much more than prior generations. Although, it goes by a slightly different format, making it a little confusing for previous Photoshop users, it does have a number of significantly useful tools that are more powerful than ever before. Here's a few Healing tools that can help you rid your photos of those unsightly blemishes, whether it's for a professional portfolio or a family album.
It's been with Photoshop almost since the beginning. Introduced in CS2, the Spot Healing Brush help repairs problematic areas in the image, which is especially important when taking portraits of models. As a retouch tool, it is strong, powerful and fast. It does what it says with immediate response, enabling you to touch up images quickly. Up till the most recent Photoshop, the Spot Healing Brush has required no input due to it being an automatic tool. Its an indiscriminate tool, as it works by finding a random colour tone near by, and then fills in the selected area for you, however, this is problematic on larger areas as it shows up. It is also not good if the colour selected by the tool is too different as it may make your photo unnatural looking.
So CS5 has improved upon this by redeveloping the tool to make it more precise and accurate. Although still automatic, rather than searching for the closest colour proximity wise, it looks for the closest colour and texture in relation to the highlighted spot. It intelligently searches for what looks best, rather than what's the closest option. Photoshop has renamed it too, giving it a more accurate and fitting name. Now known as the Content-Aware-Healing feature, it does what it says, it heals by taking the content into account, enabling more accurate corrections.
This tool is best for much smaller areas on the image, enabling you to rid the photo of even the smallest unsightly blemishes. However, it is not appropriate for larger spaces. Thus Adobe has also come up with a similar tool for the larger spaces. The Content-Aware fill works exactly in the same way as the smaller feature, the only difference is that it works on selected larger areas.
