Picture from Pixentral...

[janeybabes]

Is this what I do to post to a thread..? sorry, first time trying to post a picture from pixentral....

[janeybabes]

It worked!!!! thank you Julie (moderator!)
OK - so I'm in Elements 10
This is a very basic picture showing her hair across the chin, and some yucky blemish on her chin and across her nose - teeth are OK as she just had her braces off
I am making a duplicate layer when I open this and then I use the brush tool but then I just get awful brown marks when I brush, or a white chalk like effect when I brush. I have adjusted the opacity to take that chalk look away but it looks awful.
If anyone get give me step by step points on how to do this I would LOVE your help. Thank you everybody ))

[Preeb]

Originally Posted by janeybabes

It worked!!!! thank you Julie (moderator!)
OK - so I'm in Elements 10
This is a very basic picture showing her hair across the chin, and some yucky blemish on her chin and across her nose - teeth are OK as she just had her braces off
I am making a duplicate layer when I open this and then I use the brush tool but then I just get awful brown marks when I brush, or a white chalk like effect when I brush. I have adjusted the opacity to take that chalk look away but it looks awful.
If anyone get give me step by step points on how to do this I would LOVE your help. Thank you everybody ))

I would try the spot healing brush. If that doesn't do it, then play around with the clone stamp.

I did this with the spot healing brush:



Nice photo by the way.

[janeybabes]

THANKS RICK - why can't I do that!!!! what a great job. Did you just choose spot healing brush and thats it??!! did you hold down the option key when you brushed? I have a MAC....

I've posted this picture now which is edited in Florabella Vintage Lollipop BUT I learnt how to put a watermark on - so exciting!!!!!!

[Sepiana]

Hi janeybabes, welcome aboard!

For this kind of retouching I think the tools to use would be the Spot Healing brush and/or the Healing brush. The Spot Healing brush is great for fixing minor blemishes. Just paint over the area you want to repair. The Spot Healing brush will blend the surrounding area into the blemish you are painting over. This will make the area you are trying to repair indistinguishable from the background.

In the case of your image I just used the Spot Healing brush (Mode = Content Aware). As you can tell I didn’t get rid of all the blemishes. I just wanted to give you an idea of how to go about it. I focused on the stray hair, some blemishes on the chin, and a couple on her nose. As you stated you want to learn how to do it yourself, here are the instructions on how to use the Spot Healing brush.

1. In the Toolbox right-click on the Band-Aid icon and select the Spot Healing brush, the one with dotted selection lines extending from it.

2. Choose a brush size just a little bigger than the blemish you want to repair. To do that you can either use the Size slider in the Options bar or you can use the bracket keys -- ] (for a larger brush) or [ (for a smaller brush).

3. Click on the blemish. In case the brush doesn’t really cover the blemish, just drag the brush over it.

4. Release the mouse. That’s it. PSE will repair the blemish.

If you have a large blemish you need to fix, I suggest you use the Healing Brush. When you use this brush you choose the area that’s going to be blended into the blemish area. The steps to use the Healing brush are the same as the ones above. The only difference is that before you begin painting over the blemish, you need to sample material (pixels). You do this by Alt-clicking (Option on a Mac) on an area to get a sample. Then PSE will use that sample for the necessary replacement pixels to fix the blemish.

Hope this helps!

[janeybabes]

Thank you so much - I've done what you said and I'm about to put a picture up - you will see what happens when I brush - I am dragging the brush in a squiggle motion and dark brown appears all over the area and when elements then accepts it, it is there but not as dark. I am making a duplicate layer, and I even changed the foreground colour a couple of times to see what happens. I am set to content aware mode - why oh why does it look like this??? :/

[janeybabes]

Here it is with my result ((((

[Hankw]

Hi:
Make sure you are using the Healing Brush/Spot Healing Brush, not the regular brush. It's in the toolbar on the left and looks like a Band aid. Hold your cursor over it for a second or two and it will show you both.

Any time you see a little triangle in the lower left corner of the tool icon, this means there are other tools nested inside.

The shortcut key for the healing brush is ( J )
The shortcut key for the regular brush ( B )

[janeybabes]

Thanks Hank - I am def using the healing brush selected via the bandaid and it still looks like that

[Hankw]

Another thought:::::

Duplicate your layer when you work on it to save your Original.

Then

Play with those a little to see how they react. Try both, mess with them on a new layer and when you have played enough just discard it.
HTH