✔ Healing Brush Tool | Photoshop Tutorial | Artose

The Healing Brush tool (shortcut 'J') in Photoshop allows you to sample a textured area and apply it to another section of an image. To use it, select a layer, press and hold 'Alt' to sample a desired area, then paint over the area you wish to heal. The tool blends the sampled texture with the new area, making the changes seamless and nearly undetectable.

You can adjust the sampling size both before and after sampling an area. By default, with 'Aligned' unchecked, each new stroke with the Healing Brush restarts the sampling from the original point. If 'Aligned' is checked, the tool remembers the last sampled point and continues painting from where you left off, allowing for continuous blending across multiple strokes.

The Healing Brush can sample from one document and paint onto another. The 'Clone Source' panel, accessible by clicking an icon, allows you to store up to five different clone sources. Each clone stamp in this panel can hold a unique sampled area, enabling quick switching between multiple sources for painting.

The Clone Source panel also displays the X and Y coordinates of your sampled source, indicating its position from the origin. You can also flip the sampled source horizontally or vertically, or both, before painting. Additionally, you can scale the sampled source, either proportionally by linking width and height or disproportionately by unlinking them.

The 'Source Angle' option allows you to rotate the sampled source to a desired angle. All these options (flipping, scaling, rotation) can be combined for more complex transformations. A reset icon is available to return all these values to their default settings.

'Show Overlay' toggles the visibility of the sampled source preview within the brush. You can also adjust the opacity of this preview and change its blend mode (e.g., Normal, Difference, Lighten, Invert) which only affects the preview, not the final painted result. The 'Clipped' option restricts the preview of the sampled area to only appear within the brush's circular boundary.

'Auto Hide' automatically conceals the sampled image preview outside the healing brush when you start painting, providing a less cluttered view. The Healing Brush also has its own inbuilt blend modes, with 'Normal' being the default and most commonly used, blending the sampled texture with the background's color while preserving the sampled texture.

The 'Replace' blend mode paints an exact copy of the sampled texture without adapting to the background's color. The 'Color' blend mode takes hue and saturation from the sampled source but luminosity from the target area. Conversely, the 'Luminosity' blend mode takes luminosity from the source and hue and saturation from the target.

'Diffusion' controls how well the sampled pixels blend with the background, particularly along the rim of the brush. A higher diffusion value results in better blending. The 'Legacy' option, when selected, disables the diffusion control and applies a medium strength diffusion automatically. Notably, the 'Replace' blend mode does not offer diffusion control.

The 'Source' can be set to 'Sample' (taking pixels from the image) or 'Pattern' (allowing you to paint with a selected pattern). When working with multiple layers, the 'Sample Layers' option determines which layers the Healing Brush can sample from: 'Current Layer' (only the active layer), 'Current & Below' (the active layer and all layers beneath it), or 'All Layers' (all visible layers regardless of selection).

The 'Ignore Adjustment Layer' option controls whether the Healing Brush samples pixels with or without the effects of any active adjustment layers. When checked, the tool samples the raw image data, bypassing adjustment layer effects. When unchecked, it samples the image as it appears with the adjustment layer's effects applied.