From the course: Photos for macOS Catalina Essential Training

Eliminate flaws with the Retouch brush - Apple Photos Tutorial

From the course: Photos for macOS Catalina Essential Training

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Eliminate flaws with the Retouch brush

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- [Speaker] While we're here, I want to show you the retouch tool because this is a very handy, very nice tool to work with. And before I do that I will show you a trick. So a lot of times where we're retouching things we want to kind of zoom in a bit and get a closer look. For instance, up in this area here, I know I have a few stray hairs, but in this view we're not really seeing them that much. However, if I put the pointer right in the area that I want a closer look at and I hit the z key, then I can zoom right in. Isn't that nice? Hit the z and we zoom right out. So let's say that I want to maybe address a stray hair here with the retouch tool. It's very easy to work with. It's right here. All I have to do is click on the brush and I get a little retouch circle there to work with. Now I can make the size bigger or smaller using this little scale here, but what I like to use are the bracket keys. So the right bracket key will make it bigger on the keyboard and the left bracket key will make it smaller. So you want it a little bit bigger, but you don't want it too big. And then all you do it paint, so I'm just going to click and I'm just going to paint along this hair right here, just follow it all the way along here, and you'll see what it does. Now what it did here is that it did get rid of the hair, but you can see it just sort of smear, we lost some of that texture there, okay. So I don't really consider that a good retouch. We're going to go ahead and undo that, so now instead I'm going to click on this. I'm going to hold down the option key and I'm going to click right here. So I'm going to sample the skin area right there and now I'm going to paint and let's see if it does a better job. See how that sample area is just trailing along. I try to sample somewhere where the textures are going to be similar. Oops, went a little crazy there. And look at that. Now that is much better. This is not the application, this is the operator. Let's see if I can finish that off right there. See, now that's a bad sample. I'm going to hit command z. It's still sampling back here so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to sample right here. So I'm holding down the option key. Alright now let's see if I get a better sample right there. There we go. Okay, so retouch by itself is pretty good. I mean it's great for spots and things like that, but if you want to maintain some of the texture then you're better off going to what's more of a cloning tool which is what you get when you hold down the option key. So for example, this is just the smallest of blemishes here, but let's see what happens, first of all I got to make my brush size a little bit bigger. Let's say that if I go right here, we're going to sample this. I'm going to hold option down there. Alright, now let's go on this and see what happens. See how we hold that texture and it's not just a fuzzy area. Okay, one more time here. We're going to move my brush size down a bit. Let's see. Well I'm going to do this hair right here. I'm going to sample on this side, not this side. This side seems a little too bright. So we'll come out here, hold down that option key, click. Alright, now let's just follow this hair up right here. Let's see how we do. Just till right there. Very nice. Okay, now I'm going to hit the z key to back back out, and we have retouched those stray hairs right there. Now it's also good on things like little blemishes, like she has the smallest one right here. Let me hit z. I mean, this woman does not have many blemishes, but here's just like the smallest of blemishes right here. I don't think I'll need to sample this. Let's see if I can just click on it. I don't like it. Command z, I think it's still sampling from somewhere else. So I'm just going to come right over here, option, click. Now we'll do this. Much better, okay. Hit the z key to come back out. So that is a look at the retouch. You can either just retouch straight and let it choose what area it wants to sample, or you can take control by holding down the option key, sampling an area and then retouching.

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