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Retouching Brush: Clone, Heal, Remove

Lesson 29 from: Editing and Organizing your Photography in Lightroom

Jared Platt

Retouching Brush: Clone, Heal, Remove

Lesson 29 from: Editing and Organizing your Photography in Lightroom

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

29. Retouching Brush: Clone, Heal, Remove

<b>In this lesson you will learn how to use the Clone, Heal and Remove brushes in Lightroom and why and when to use each of them.&#160; Learn how to make short work of retouching your photos without going to Photoshop.</b>
Next Lesson: Sharing Your Images

Lesson Info

Retouching Brush: Clone, Heal, Remove

1 So now we have gone through the process 2 of importing images. 3 We've selected images, we've adjusted images, 4 we have retouched images by adjusting skin. 5 The only thing that we haven't done 6 is removing items from images. 7 So let's do that now. 8 And I'm gonna just go to an image that I really like, 9 but I don't like whatever this pipe thing is here. 10 And so that pipe thing is bothering me quite a bit. 11 So I'm gonna go into the retouching options here, 12 which is this little bandaid that's below the crop area. 13 And I'm gonna go to, there's three different options here. 14 There's the normal clone stamp and that is just simply like, 15 it's just like in Photoshop where you are kind of drawing 16 over something and then it is choosing another spot 17 to select and then you have several 18 different options up here. 19 You have the size of it, the feather of it, 20 and then you have the opacity. 21 And our opacity is way down, 22 so we're gonna take it all the way to a ...

hundred. 23 And so it's just copying from this area and pasting there. 24 The problem is, is that you can see it really well 25 because it's just copying exactly what's here 26 and putting it there. 27 There's no intelligence to the tool, 28 so it very rarely works. 29 So the next thing that we want to try 30 and we're gonna delete this one. 31 So if you've done this, you just hit the delete key 32 and it'll destroy that, that clone. 33 The next one is the bandaid option, 34 which is called the heel tool. 35 And I'm gonna do the same thing, 36 just draw across it like this and it does a better job. 37 Take that opacity up to a hundred percent does a better job. 38 It's taking from one place, putting on another, 39 but then it's choosing the tonality and color 40 from that other area in order to kind of intelligently 41 map out that area. 42 So it's more intelligent, 43 but it's not as intelligent as the newest tool. 44 So let's delete this one and let's try the new tool 45 that is called Content Aware Remove. 46 Far superior to the other two tools 47 and now I can go through 48 and I'm just gonna draw across this pipe here. 49 Like that. Boom, done. 50 That's it. 51 That's all I had to do and it's so good at it. 52 So excellent. I can just keep doing this all day long. 53 So good. 54 I'm even gonna get rid of this stick 55 'cause it's a little bit, 56 it's distracting there at that. 57 Now there's a little flaw right there. 58 So I'm gonna zoom in and I'm just gonna come down here, 59 change the size of this and I'm just gonna pop that there. 60 Zoom back out, perfect. 61 Lot less distracting things in the photo 62 and all a result of content aware, remove. 63 Love it. Fantastic tool. 64 Now let's talk about this same tool when it comes to people. 65 So I'm working on a portrait of a person 66 and I want to do a little retouching on this person. 67 I'm gonna come in and use the remove tool in most cases 68 because it's quite simple to use. 69 It's fast and it does a great job. 70 So I'm just going in and getting rid of blemishes 71 and inconsistencies in skin. 72 Just drawing over those really easy, 73 you can see it does a great job. 74 He looks great. 75 I'm gonna zoom in just a little bit more and make sure 76 that I get rid of some other things 77 that are popping up there. 78 See that, look at that. That was pretty good. 79 It just need a little bit of a there. 80 That'll work. 81 So now that looks good, except you can see 82 that there are dark circles under his eyes there. 83 So the best way to get rid of those 84 is just to go into the the heel tool. 85 And then I'm going to increase the size of that brush 86 and remember that it's feathered quite a bit. 87 So it's feathered up in the 80 percentile area. 88 The opacity can be at about 30, 40%, something like that. 89 And then I'm just gonna draw over 90 the dark area of the eye like that. 91 And then it tries to choose the other eye 92 because it's trying to keep it the same. 93 But what I want to do is I want to just put it somewhere 94 where there's just kind of like a soft skin. 95 So anywhere around here is fine. 96 That actually works pretty well right there. 97 And then I'm just gonna change the opacity. See that's zero. 98 And I'm just changing the opacity. 99 The point that it kind of muffles, 100 I still want some of that darkness, but not all of it. 101 Now I'm gonna do the same thing over here. 102 Just gonna go like this, 103 and I'm gonna choose maybe up here somewhere. 104 The other thing that I can do is if I can't find an area 105 that's got enough space on it, 106 I can also zoom out this place. 107 There is not a lot of space, but I could use like a sky. 108 You could actually use the sky to do that. 109 In this case, I'm gonna have to just do smaller sections 110 so that I can take this and put it over here on his cheek 111 and then I'm gonna do it again right over here 112 and take it and put it on his cheek there. 113 See that? So that softens up those under the eyes. 114 And then of course the last thing you can do is go back 115 to your mask, create a brush, 116 and then in that brush just kind of take the shadows 117 and bring them up the black up. 118 Then go to effects and bring the texture down a little bit. 119 And the contrast go to to light 120 and bring the contrast down. 121 And once you've done that, 122 if you just go in and brush that out, Ooh, 123 that's too sharp. 124 So let's do it again, brush. 125 We're gonna bring the contrast down. 126 We're gonna bring the shadows up, 127 the blacks up the effect. 128 We're gonna bring the texture down just a little bit 129 and we'll paint on that. 130 But we're gonna take the the feathering 131 and go at a hundred percent feathering. 132 That last one, it was at 0% feathering. 133 And then our flow is way too much. 134 So we're gonna do like a 50% flow density is good, 135 and then we're just gonna kind of zoom in here 136 and paint in on his lower part of his eyes like that. 137 And then once we've done that, 138 then I can just take the amount of what I just did 139 and increase it or decrease it, see that there's 0% 140 and I'm just kind of brightening up those shadows 141 a little bit, there. 142 That'll work. 143 So retouching isn't just about using a healing brush 144 and retouching out all the blemishes. 145 It also involves brushing some masks 146 and using some intelligent thought 147 as to what it is that you're seeing that's a problem. 148 And that helps you create the mask or the filter 149 that the skin then looks better through, 150 like we did with smoothing skin. 151 We used contrast, we used the shadows 152 and the black points, and we used the texture options 153 as well as noise reduction as well as contrast. 154 Did I say contrast already? 155 I think I keep forgetting contrast. 156 And we also used the sharpness and negative sharpness. 157 And so all of those things kind of play into skin. 158 And so just think through what is the problem with the skin 159 and how could I possibly solve that with the tools 160 that I have at my disposal? 161 Add those to a mask and then paint the mask in. 162 And then where those fail, where you can't get AI 163 to select a face and then apply a mask for you 164 that has those tools already applied on it. 165 Then use your tools like your retouching tools, 166 the healing brush or the remove tool. 167 Those kind of things are kind of a last resort.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Adaptive_JP_LR_Presets.zip
Jared_Platt_-_Editing_and_Organizing_Photography_in_Lightroom_Photo_Examples.zip

Ratings and Reviews

Tim Byrne
 

Great job, Jared! You have delivered a master class for anyone beginning a journey into Lightroom, presented in absolutely clear and relaxed style. And for those with more experience with the program, every old dog can learn a few more new tricks. Teaching software is tough. Jared does it by breaking down each function and including not only the what, but the how and why as well. And each step is amplified by crystal clear photos which are manipulated with the function at hand. Bring a pad of paper, some snacks, and a cup (or two) of coffee. He is relentless in his presentation. You might watch this course as a freebie, but buy it to be able to refer to it for specific steps and processes. I've been using Adobe products since the mid 1990s and this is the best instructional presentation I've taken. ABSOLUTE WINNER1 Thanks, Jared

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