[Rob Barron]

Somebody mentioned on a thread recently that he had no idea how to use the Patch Tool in Photoshop so I thought I'd put a simple tutorial together to show how easy it is to use this extremely powerful tool.

I am including a few screenshots as I know these are helpful for people to see what I am talking about. Ok, let's go....

The Patch Tool - Where is it?

In CS/CS2, the patch tool is on the tool pallette, and looks like a patch on a pair of jeans. You will find it right here:

Yes but how do I use it?

Ok, now we need a picture to work on. I am going for something totally improbable just for a bit of fun. Imagine you have a picture of the Red Arrows but for some reason you want to change the formation from a group of nine to a group of eight! Yeh I know but it could just as easily be a pesky bird you want to get rid of!

So here's the picture, the plane we want to remove is circled in red:

Ok, so you've selected the tool by cliking on it on the tool pallette. Now all you have to do is draw a selection around it:

Now, we want to move it to a patch of sky that has no plane in it. The beauty of this tool is that the sky does not have to be a perfect match as it would if we were cloning. Photoshop will look at the tones in the patch and match them in to the area selected so that you can't see the join!

Ok, so we click anywhere inside the selection we have made and drag it to an area of sky we have chosen. You can see that sky area appearing in the are you have taken the plane from but nothing is set for real until you drop the selection in its new area. When you do, you will see that the area you selected from has now been painted over using the sky from the new area but any variations of tone have been matched in.

If you selected very close to the piece you want to remove, this will sometimes leave a 'smudge' behind when you do the patching. If this is the course, you can select that same area and move it again... and again... until it has all gone. Alternatively you can make a new selection with a slightly bigger margine around the unwanted object.

That's it, deselect (press Ctrl+D) and you now have the Red Arrows formation of 8 instead of 9!

How easy was that!

Removing smaller dust specks and marks with the Healinbg Brush:

Now, it might not be something big like that you want to remove, it could be something small like a 'dust bunny' (a mark left on the picture because of a bit of dirt on your sensor). You could patch it in the same way as the above or you could clone it out but you could do somewhere between the two if you use the Healing Brush Tool. Here we have a picture of some fast moving water but I have circled a couple of dust bunnies we would like to get rid of...

You can find the Healing Brush tool in exactly the same place as the Patch tool but it is underneath it. If you click on the little black triangle on the patch tool it will reveal the other tools hidden underneath so you can select the Healing Brush tool. If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts (I do!) then just hold down Shift and press J. This will cycle through the buttons in that part of the toolbar. Cycle through until you get the symbol that looks like a sticky plaster.

Ok, using this is like using the clone tool. You select an area to heal from by pressing Alt and clicking on a place of similar colour and texture...

Now, select a soft brush a little bigger than the mark you want to get rid of and with one single stroke, brush over the mark. At first it will look bad but as soon as you lift the brush from the picture, it will instantly heal itself so that the mark is gone but the texture and tone of the surrounding area is maintained.

Ok, that's it, not difficult at all huh? As with all these things, sit down and have a little play. You'll soon appreciate these tools for the pwoerful tools they are. Being simple to use just makes them an even greater joy to put into practice.

Hope this has helped.
Cheers,
Rob

[Steve]

Thanks for taking the time to write and present this tutorial Rob

Although to me they are basic tools that I learned a while ago, everyone has to start somewhere and its easy for the more experienced members to forget that the people new to PS will struggle (with it being such a complex program) with even the simpler processes.

[Rob Barron]

Thanks Steve, you're spot on there. I regular do Photoshop tutorial evenings where people ask me to show how to do various things and I always go along expecting to get really complex tasks but actually get far more questions about things that to me are perhaps fairly basic.

It is easy to forget of course that those things were not basic to me when I started and we all want to progress, irrespective of what level of competence we have with any particular skill etc. That is the beauty and strength of Pixalo: I can help other people with photoshop and I can always find someone who will help me with some other program that I am less familiar with.

Share and share alike! As always, if others have any tool they want a tutorial on, let me know and I'll see what i can do.

Cheers,
Rob

[skipper954]

Thanks Rob

I consider myself an intermediate ps user, been learning for over a year, but I had never used the patch tool. Cool beans.

skip

[water]

Cheers for this one,will give it a bash

[Rob Barron]

Just a little friendly reminder: tutorials are a lot of work (take all the photos, process them accordingly, upload them all, write the tutorial and put in all the pictures) so if you find them helpful, the usual Pixalo way to show your appreciation is to leave a Reputation Point for the writer. 67 people have read this one so hopefully someone has found it helpful.

Thanks

[Gary Bagshawe]

Rob I think that one of the problems is that if a member has given you rep for 1 of your tutorials they have to "spread it around" a bit before they can give ya some more. I have had this problem before wanting to give rep to the same person for more than one article, oh, in fact I think that would be your good self.

[JMitchell]

Great tutorials. i knew how to use these tools but not necessarily at which time to apply them, ie: I would have cloned for specks etc. Just tried heal on sensor dust, magic!!!!

Thanks,

Jack M

[chickadee]

as this is all new to me ,I can only say thankyou for tutoril plus the easy step by step illustration ,it really makes such a different when trying to understand it .As all the books ,magazines etc we have on this subject ,to me , iam before i have got past the first few sentences let alone get to the computer,So I appreciate your way of setting these things out .

[Rob Barron]

Thanks Chickadee and I am glad you are finding it helpful. I definitely do think tutorials need images to show what is going on. The old adage that declares a picture is worth a thousand words definitely does hold truth for these.

If there is any other tool you'd like some help with, I will happily make a tutorial for you so don't be afraid to ask

Cheers,
Rob

[chickadee]

much appreciated Rob , will definately be asking for assistance