

If you are a little too heavy with the tool, it can leave you with a smooth, almost airbrushed look that doesn’t appear at all natural but does look good on magazine covers.

In modern vernacular, when someone talks about a model or public figure being “photoshopped,” what they are often talking about is the use of the Healing Brush to remove wrinkles, cellulite, freckles, spots and other unsightly blemishes or signs of aging. This creates a smooth and seamless “patch.” When to Use This Tool This tool actually analyzes the area around your selection to match hue, balance, saturation and tone. The Clone Stamp tool will replace an exact arrangement of pixels, but the Healing Brush is a much more elegant and intuitive tool. The Healing Brush, however, is better for smaller, finer work such as removing scars, large tattoos or a stray strand of hair blowing across someone’s face, particularly when you want the finished look to blend in smoothly and seamlessly with the original background.

The Clone Stamp tool is generally the best tool for replacing large areas of pixels, such as if you want to replace a person standing behind the main subject in a beach photo. Like the Clone Stamp tool, the Healing Brush takes pixels around the area you select and “clones” them so that you can apply them to another part of the image. Here is an overview of the Healing Brush, along with a breakdown of what it does, what it’s used for and when you want to use it. One specialized version of the Clone Stamp tool is the Healing Brush. The tool was one of the most versatile and useful in the Photoshop toolbox, and it has since spawned a host of similar tools that work on the same principle but accomplish slightly different tasks. One of the first tools included with Photoshop was the Clone Stamp tool.
