Removing Flaws

Use Repair Tools to remove flaws, such as:

  • Skin blemishes
  • Telephone wires and other unwanted objects
  • Flash flares from snowflakes or windows
  • Lens scratches and water drops

 

There are four types of repairs available:

  • Heal
  • Clone
  • Blended Clone
  • Smart Erase

Repair Tool Types

Heal Enabling the Heal radio button evokes the Healing Brush. The Healing Brush copies pixels from one area of a photo to another, but analyzes the pixels in the source area before copying. The Healing Brush also analyzes the pixels in the target area, and then blends the pixels of both source and target to match the surrounding area, ensuring that the lighting and color of the replacement pixels integrate with the surrounding area. The Healing Brush works particularly well with photos that involve complicated textures, like skin or fur.
Clone Enabling the Clone radio button evokes the Cloning Brush. The Cloning Brush copies the exact pixels from one area of a photo to another, creating an identical image area. The Cloning Brush is more effective for photos that have strong, simple textures or uniform colors, as it is more difficult to identify the copied pixels in the finished photo.
Blended Clone The Blended Clone tool copies the exact pixels from one area of a photo to another, but it analyzes the pixels in the target area and blends them with the copied pixels.
Smart Erase For information on Smart Erase, see the Smart Erase section below.

 

Repair settings can be saved as presets for future use.

To remove flaws from a photo:

  1. Select Filter | Enhance | Repair Tools from the main menu.
  2. Select one of the following:
    • Heal: Copies the pixels from the source area to the target area, and blends pixels into the surrounding image area.
    • Clone: Copies the pixels from the source area to the target area.
    • Blended Clone: Copies the pixels from the source area to the target area, then analyzes the pixels in the target area and blends them with the copied pixels.
    • Smart Erase: Analyzes pixels and fills in the brushed area based on what the image would most likely look like without the brushed object. See the Smart Erase section below.
  3. Drag the Nib Width and Feathering sliders as described in the table below.
  4. Right-click the image to set a source location. Pixels will be copied from this location and used in the target location.
  5. Click and drag over the area that you want to cover. If you selected the healing brush, Gemstone analyzes and replaces the pixels when you release the mouse button. If you selected the blended clone tool, Gemstone analyzes, replaces, and blends the pixels when you release the mouse button.
  6. Do one of the following:
    • Click OK to apply your changes and close the tool.
    • Click Cancel to discard all changes and close the tool.

Click Reset to reset the sliders. If you saved your changes, you cannot reset your settings.

Scroll with your mouse to adjust the brush size on the fly, or press the Shift key while you scroll to adjust feathering.

Repair Options

Nib Width

Sets the width of the brush. The maximum brush width is relative to the size of your image.

Feathering

Sets the amount to feather on the edge of the brush to prevent sharp transitions between the original and healed part of the photo.

Feathering is set as a percentage of the nib width, not as a specific number of pixels. This means that you do not have to adjust the feathering when you reset the Nib Width, as it automatically adjusts to a percentage of the new nib width. This option is not available with the Blended Clone tool.

Show preview in cursor

Enable this checkbox to display a preview of your selected source point in the cursor.

 

Right-click a slider to reset to the default value.

Smart Erase

Remove unwanted objects from images by brushing an image area while using the Smart Erase filter. The Smart Erase filter analyzes the image and predicts how to best fill in the brushed area. This is based on what the image would most likely look like without the brushed object(s).

  1. Select Filter | Enhance | Repair Tools from the main menu.
  2. In the Repair dialog, enable the Smart Erase radio button.
  3. Drag the Nib Width slider or adjust the mouse wheel to set the width of the brush.
  4. Brush over the area to be filled with the mouse button depressed. After releasing the mouse button, the fill will be applied. Repeat until the desired look is achieved.

See also: