Have you ever seen a fantastic photo but wonder how it was taken? A good photographer can accomplish this. And if not, Photoshop has tools for correcting many kinds of imperfections, from smoothing pores and wrinkles to removing unsightly power lines. How about the pages of beauty magazines? Wow, those models have no flaws! Or what about the cherish photos in our wallets of our loved ones—all leave the tale-tell signs of cracks, rips, tears, and twisted corners. The pictures that you see can be fixed with Photoshop. There are many other ways to retouch images in Photoshop such as blur, dodge, burn tools; for the time being, we are going to use the usual suspects in Photoshop.
For those who are adventurous, try all 70 Beauty Retouching Tutorials, that goes into in-depth detail what the many tools do. A few years ago an article was written for CS3; one can still use this for any version, including Creative Cloud.
Three tools that aide in retouching is the Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool, and the Patch Tool.
The Healing Tools
The Spot Healing tools allow you to fix flaws such as scratches, blemishes, or inconsistencies in your images. Located in the Toolbox, the Spot Healing Brush Tool contains additional hidden tools: the Spot Healing Brush Tool, the Healing Brush Tool, the Patch Tool, Content-Aware Move Tool and the Red Eye Tool. To select any of these tools, click on J or Shift-J.
Spot Healing Brush Tool:
It allows you to conceal an undesirable portion of an image by covering the area with a sample that Photoshop automatically selects from the surrounding area.
Healing Brush Tool:
It allows you to conceal an undesirable portion of an image, such as a scratch, by covering the area with the sample you select from another part of the picture. See the Healing Brush Tutorial
Patch Tool:
It allows you to select an irregularly shaped portion of an image to conceal before selecting the sample that will cover it.
See the Patch Tutorial
Content-Aware Move Tool:
It allows you to move elements within a scene while Photoshop automatically fills in the missing details. See the Content-Aware Move Tutorial
Red Eye Tool:
Darkens a specific point to hide the red-eye in an image. See the Red Eye Tutorial
Cloning (Rubber Stamp) Tool:
Another great tool for retouching images in Photoshop. This allows you to clone or stamp parts of the image in the top of another image. See the Cloning (Rubber Stamp Tutorial)