Adobo't puto-Shop CS+: Reducing Wrinkles With The Healing Brush In Photoshop (cont.)

Photoshop Tutorial #2 Reducing Wrinkles With The Healing Brush In Photoshop

Now that I've cleaned up the area around that one large wrinkle that runs under his eye, I'll have an easier time removing it. I'll remove it in sections rather than trying with one continuous paint stroke. First, I'll sample an area of good texture from nearby, then I'll click at its youngest end and begin painting along the wrinkle, releasing my mouse button just as I get directly under his eye:

Using a series of shorter paint strokes to remove the larger wrinkle.

I'll continue my way along the large wrinkle, sampling texture from a different area and cleaning up any small problem spots as I go:

Continuing with short strokes along the wrinkle.

Finally, after reaching the corner of his eye and touching up some minor problems, the wrinkle is gone:

The large wrinkle has been completely removed.

I'll continue making my way around the image with the Healing Brush to remove the remaining wrinkles, including the similar large wrinkle under his other eye. To speed things up for myself, I'll switch over to my pen tablet (a Wacom Intuos4), which allows me to change the size of the brush dynamically as I paint simply by varying the amount of pressure I apply to the tablet with the pen, a much faster way to work rather than constantly resizing the brush from the keyboard. If you don't have a pressure sensitive pen tablet, you can still get great results using a mouse. The pen just makes things easier.

Here's how the image looks after spending 10-15 minutes or so with the Healing Brush to remove the remaining wrinkles around his eyes, his forehead and around his chin:

With all of his wrinkles removed, he almost looks like a different person, or at least a much younger person.

Step 6: Lower The Opacity Of The Layer

The Healing Brush, along with a little patience on my part, did an amazing job of removing the man's wrinkles, but if I was to show him my results at this point, I'm not sure he'd be as impressed with me as I am. He knows, and everyone who knows him knows, that he has very distinct wrinkles on his face, and those wrinkles add a lot to his personality. You may be surprised at how many people would be insulted to suddenly see them gone, which is why our ultimate goal was not to completely remove the wrinkles, just to reduce their impact.

To ease up on the retouching work and bring the wrinkles back, but to a lesser extent than they were originally, lower the opacity of the "wrinkles" layer. You'll find the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers panel. Finding the right opacity setting is simply a matter of experimenting, and the easiest way to do that is to press the letter V on your keyboard, which will instantly select the Move Tool from the Tools panel. With the Move Tool selected, we can change the opacity of the currently selected layer just by pressing numbers on the keyboard. Start by pressing the number 5, which will lower the opacity in the Layers panel to 50%. This is usually a good place to start:

Press "V" to switch to the Move Tool, then easily change the layer opacity by typing a number.

To set the opacity to something like 55%, type "55" quickly. Keep an eye on the image in the document window to judge the results as you try out different opacity settings. Pressing 0 will switch you back to 100%. For my image, I think 60% opacity works out well, but the value you use for your image may be different. Here, once again, is how the image looked originally: