Photoshop and Photoshop Elements both have straightforward and easy-to-use tools for removing imperfections from a photograph – dust specks, wrinkles in a scanned picture, hot spots from a flash, juice stains on a shirt, wrinkles on a face.  The list could go on and on!

So this tutorial will consist of a brief overview about using each tool, and conclude with some practical applications for your pictures.

• Spot Healing Brush- The tool for repairing very small spots.  It is the band-aid button in your ToolBox.  This brush works by blending the blemish into the surrounding area.  Choose a brush size a bit bigger than the blemish and click on top of the spot.  That’s it!
• Healing Brush – Right click on the Band-Aid button to toggle between the Healing Brush and the Spot Healing Brush.  This tool blends the imperfection with pixels that you choose, rather than pixels surrounding the bad spot.  To use, select the Healing Brush tool and alt+click on the part of the picture that you want the spot to look like.  Then, drag the mouse over the area that needs changing.
• Clone Stamp – Works like the Healing Brush, except that rather than blending in the new pixels, the clone stamp merely replaces the old ones with the new.  Use alt+click to select replacement pixels, then brush over the problem area.

Ideas for Using the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp in Photoshop Elements

• Flatten your image and duplicate the background layer before using these tools.
• For removal of hot spots caused by a flash, use the clone tool with the blending mode set to darken and opacity set to about 50%.  If effect is too dark, undo your work and reduce opacity. 
• Runny noses are a lot like hot spots!
• To lighten small areas of the skin that are too dark, use the same method but change the blending mode to lighten.
• To help these edits blend in, duplicate the layer that your repairs are on and add a 1 or 1.5 pixel Gaussian blur.  Use a layer mask to mask in only the areas where you need to blend in your repairs.
• Thanks to Rita at CoffeeShop for some of these great ideas!

The next installment in this Perfect Photoshop Elements Workflow Tutorial will discuss actionsin Photoshop Elements.  Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms so you don’t miss it!