Retouching Secrets of the Pros: Spot Healing Brush Tool Insider Tricks

The Spot Healing Brush Tool can be a great tool for retouching if you know how to make it work!

Photoshops’ Spot Healing Brush Tool is one of my ‘Go To’ tools for retouching. It’s just such a simple tool to use that 8 times out of 10 gives really great results. And when it comes to retouching anything batting 800 is worth it’s wait in gold!

But while it’s a super easy tool to use there are some things you need to be aware of so you can get the best result easily. 

With the right options set up for this tool all you need to do is brush over the things you want to retouch out and they’re gone. Magic eh?

First of all the Spot Healing Tool is found in the Tool bar in the group with the Healing Tools.  

*** Bonus Tip 1 - You can see here I’ve set the Keyboard shortcut for both the Spot Healing Brush Tool and the Healing Brush Tool to be the same key, “J”. This makes it easy to choose the tool and swap between the two by simply tapping ‘Shift + J” on the keyboard. 

*** Bonus Tip 2 - When working with these tools remember precision is your friend. Use a Brush size that is just about the same size as the thing you’re trying to retouch out. For instance if you’re getting rid of a stray hair on someone’s face use a Brush size that is just barely larger than that hair. Using too big of a Brush in an effort to move faster will leave more artifacts behind making your work more obvious.

Once you’ve chosen the Spot Healing Brush Tool you’ll see there are some options that pop up in the menu at the top of your monitor. 

And this is where the tricks happen!

With the Spot Healing Brush Tool chosen you need to set the Type, and how you want the Tool to sample the image for your work.  

Let’s look at the Sampling option first. Adobe gives us 2 options for this tool: Sample All Layers, or Not. Clicking this option OFF will limit the tool to sampling only the layer you’re working on.

In my previous article on Portrait Retouching Workflow I wrote about how useful it can be to use new, empty layers for your retouching work making it easy to revise.

But if there is nothing in that layer you need to turn the “Sample All Layers” option ON. 

The problem with this is if you have layers above the one you’re working on that overlap or affect this one Sampling All Layers will give you the wrong result.

Say you have a Curves Adjustment Layer on top of all your layers that makes the image lighter. Working on a layer below that Curves Adjustment Layer will double up that lightening affect where you use the tool. 

So we have a choice, either turn off all the layers above the ones we’re working on, or turn this option OFF and work directly on the layer, not an ‘empty’ one.

(Adobe if you’re reading this PLEASE give us the same options we have with the Healing Brush Tool - Current, Current & Below, or All Layers.)

Next let’s move on to then “Type” options. Looking at the Options bar we can see there are 3 choices: Content Aware, Create Texture, and Proximity Match. These options affect the result you get from the tool.

When working with the Spot Healing Brush Tool my preference 9 times out of 10 is to use the Content Aware option. This option works very well for most tasks. And if you have to cross a border, say where the eyebrow and skin meet, it will tend to honor that border and give you a good result. 

The thing to look out for when using this tool is to watch the texture of the result. Some times it will lose a bit of the texture you need giving you a bit of a blurred texture that gives away the work you’re doing. 

When that happen I’ll switch the Type option to “Proximity Match” as this tends to do a better job matching the texture nearby. 

While this tends to do a good job matching textures you can get odd result when crossing those border areas, like the eyebrow area mentioned above. 

In my retouching workflow I almost never have needed to try out the “Create Texture” option so I cannot recommend that option for retouching portraits. 

To wrap it up here the Spot Healing Brush Tool can be really easy to use when retouching. All you need to do is set the options the way you need and work away.

Before I go I wanted to also let you know I’ll be teaching an in-person, hands on workshop on June 10th, 2023 at the California Center for Digital Arts on Portrait Retouching. In this 6 hour class we’ll go over the techniques I’ve used for retouching portraits giving you a guided view. This hands on class will also give you the opportunity to put these techniques in practice so bring your laptops, your tablets and your images so you can practice along getting feedback as you work to be sure you have a good understanding of the concepts we’ll talk about. 

Here’s the link to the class: https://www.centerfordigitalarts.com/product/portrait-retouching-with-dennis-dunbar/

The class, limited to 10 students,  retails for $199, but since you’re a reader of my blog here’s a discount code that will save you $50: dennis50 

Happy Retouching!