Retouching: Fine-Tuning Images - Photoshop Elements 13: The Missing Manual - page 483

and blend in the repair). If you don't like the result, press Ctrl+Z/ ⌘ -Z to undo it and
try again.
The Healing Brush offers quite a few Tool Options settings:
▪ Size . The standard brush generally works well, so you'll probably just need to adjust its
size. If you need to change other characteristics of the tool's cursor, you can use the
Brush Settings (described next).
▪ Brush Settings . Click this button for a pop-out panel that lets you customize the hard-
ness and shape of your brush cursor (see Picking and Using a Basic Brush ), as well as the
spacing of the marks it makes ( Modifying Your Brush ). If you have a graphics tablet, you
can use this panel's Size menu to tell Elements whether you want to control the brush's
size by how hard you press the stylus or by turning the stylus's scroll wheel.
▪ Aligned . If you leave this checkbox turned off, then all the source material Elements
uses comes from the spot that you Alt-clicked/Option-clicked—as long as you click to
make your repair, rather than drag. Turn on this checkbox and Elements keeps sampling
new source material as you use the tool; the sampling follows the motion of your brush.
If you drag in your photo, even if this setting is turned off, the brush behaves as though
this setting were turned on .
Generally, for both the Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp (explained next), it's easier to
leave this setting turned off. You can still change the source point by Alt-clicking/
Option-clicking another spot, but you often get better results if you make the decision
about when to move to another location rather than letting Elements decide.
▪ Source . If you leave this menu set to Sampled, Elements blends the source material into
your image as explained above. If you change this menu to Pattern, Elements blends in a
pattern instead. Using the Healing Brush with patterns is explained on The Healing
Brush .
▪ Mode . This drop-down menu lets you choose from various blend modes ( Image Views ).
Most of the time, you want one of the top two options: Normal or Replace. Normal is
usually your best choice, but if the replacement pixels give the area you're working on a
visibly different texture than the surrounding area, choose Replace instead, which pre-
serves the grain of the photo.
▪ Show Overlay . Click this button for a pop-out panel where you can adjust what you see
in the cursor when using this tool. When Show Overlay is turned on, you see a floating,