Chapter 2: Repairing with Focus and Toning Tools
In This Chapter
Dodging and burning
Manipulating color with the Sponge tool
Smudging rough spots smooth
Blurring for effect
Focusing on sharpness
One of the coolest things about Photoshop is the way it offers several tools to accomplish similar results, but with distinctly individualized looks. The focus and toning tools in Photoshop are examples of this. The focus tools blur, sharpen, and smudge your image in much the same way as the Blur, Sharpen, and Liquify filters (which I cover in Book VII). The toning tools lighten, darken, and change the richness of color in your image a bit like commands, such as Levels, Curves, and Hue/Saturation (covered in Book VIII, Chapter 1).
But where their counterparts operate only on layers or selections, the focus and toning tools let you paint the effects you want directly onto your image. Using these tools, you can often create subtler, natural looks tailored to meet your exact needs, as I explain ...
