Figure 4-27.Figure 4-28.Figure 4-29.- Paint back older information with the history brush. The
history brush, as I alluded to in the last exercise, allows you
to paint back specific areas of an image based on a snapshot
in your History panel. Here’s how we’ll use it to solve our cur-
rent problem:- Select the history brush from the toolbox, as shown in
Figure 4-27, or press the Y key. - Decrease the brush size to 8 pixels by pressing the key
several times. - Confirm in the History panel that you’re painting from the
original Patchy.tif state. You’ll see the history brush icon
next to the state that Photoshop is using for its source, as
in Figure 4-28. - Right-click with the brush and confirm that the Hardness is
set to 0 percent. Then press Esc to dismiss the context menu.
- Select the history brush from the toolbox, as shown in
PeaRl Of WISDOmThe history and healing brushes work together for tricky retouching
situations, but you want to employ different strategies when it comes to
setting brush hardness. When you’re healing, you usually want the brush
to be at its maximum hardness so that the detail you’re merging from the
source and the destination is discreet. Conversely, with the history brush,
you want a soft brush for nice soft transitions between what you’re erasing
and what you’re keeping. Fortunately, the default setting for each of these
brushes is set accordingly.
- Paint along the repeating edge as shown in Figure 4-29 to
remove the duplicated detail. (Note that I’ve colored my
brushstroke in the image to show you where I painted, but
when you use the history brush in Photoshop, it will not
leave any kind of indicating trail.
- Repeat the healing brush as necessary. If you’re still not sat-
isfied with the undetectablity of the edit, return to the healing
brush and make another pass. For the second pass, I chose as
my source the area just to the right of where I’d been working.
Then I reduced the brush size to 10 pixels and clicked in a few
key spots to cover my tracks. You can see the click points and
results in Figure 4-30, on the next page.
Healing and Patching 109