Part I: Spot Healing Brush
When you retouch an image, you have to think about the age, lighting, and original features of your subject. The main goal is to only fool people—you don't want to remove every small blemish in a photograph until it looks unrealistic. You can do this by using retouching tools sparingly until the image looks better without looking "Photoshopped."
Photoshop CS2's Spot Healing Brush is an ideal retouching tool for one-click healing of problem areas such as dust, scratches, and other minor image flaws in photos like blemishes, wrinkles, and incorrect colors. In the first part of this exercise, you'll use this brush to remove blemishes and hot spots.
Try It Out
I encourage you to seek your own photograph to try out
the tool. Snap a shot of your friend or family member when she's not
looking and tell her you want to add it to your photo album. (Remember,
don't tell her you're going to remove blemishes—she probably won't
like that!) Or if you want, you can open "spothealing1.jpg"
(or "spothealing2.jpg") provided with this exercise.
The most noticeable areas for retouching this image are around the facial areas like the nose and cheeks, as well as the man's chest.
The cool thing about using the Spot Healing Brush is that it doesn't require any sampling like its brother, the Healing Brush. It is simply used for spots. First select the Spot Healing Brush from the Toolbox. It's housed with the regular Healing Brush and the Patch Tool. To remove a targeted area, just click once on it with the brush. Watch as spots disappear!
Don't inhibit yourself by only retouching facial flaws with the Spot Healing Brush. Look at how I've used the brush to remove two large portions in these photographs. Think about it—in Photoshop's eyes, they were no different than a blemish.
 
 
Part II: Red Eye Tool
We've all seen photographs with red eye, and now Photoshop CS2 has added a tool to handle this. This part of the exercise uses the new Red Eye Tool, which is located with the Spot Healing Brush in the Toolbox. (You can also press Shift-J until the Red Eye Tool is accessible.) This tool is definitely applicable to your real-world projects!
Try It Out
Find and open a photograph of someone that suffers from
red eye or use "Kelly_RedEye.jpg"
or "Ryan_RedEye.jpg"
provided with this exercise. Zoom in closely on the red eye area. I
have to warn you, there is no secret to the technique. Here, I grabbed
the Red Eye Tool and dragged a small selection around the red eye. Poof!
Just like that, the red eye was gone!
I do want to call one area to your attention. By zooming in even more, notice how the area around the eye started to suffer from image desaturation. This is because Photoshop not only removed the red eye, but it also discolored the area inside the selection.
Try this as a remedy. Don't make a selection, but simply click the tool once on the red eye to remove it. Sometimes Photoshop does a perfect job just like that, so see if this works for you. Also, take note of the Pupil Size and Darken settings in the top Options bar. If you find the red eye is not being removed entirely, modify the Pupil Size settings. If you find the eye is too light and you need to darken it, try changing the Darken Amount setting.
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Photoshop CS2 has added a few new tools to make photo retouching even easier. Among them are the Spot Healing Brush and the Red Eye Tool. Both of these tools help take the legwork out of retouching photos because they do much of the work for you. In this exercise, you're going to see just how easy each of them is to use. 
Matt is an instructor for 
