Photoshop® CS4 Bible

Chapter 18. Retouching and Restoring Digital Images

IN THIS CHAPTER

Core retouching tools

Sample retouching workflows

The term retouching can refer to many processes that you might use when making improvements to a digital image. While there is no precise or standardized definition, fundamentally retouching is about making the image better. What "better" means depends on the person you ask. A fine art photographer will have a very different answer than a post-production artist at an advertising firm! But whether your goal is to make the people, places, or things in your photos more realistic or even surrealistic — with perfect skin, figures, and hair — Photoshop CS4 provides many useful tools for getting that job done.

This chapter will cover several of the most commonly used retouching tools, including the Clone Stamp, the Patch tool, the History Brush, the Dodge and Burn tools, and a few others. It's important to note that these aren't the only tools in Photoshop that can help you with retouching, merely the ones that are most frequently used in the typical retouching workflow.

Also, this chapter does not endeavor to make you the next great fashion magazine makeover artist, but rather provides examples more typical of the average photographer and digital hobbyist. We will cover things like how to remove blemishes, smooth eye lines, brighten eyes, and remove various kinds of unwanted objects from your images. Most importantly, these techniques will be shown with an eye toward ...