Using the Healing Tool a a blur/blend tool
mod
Hey guys, I just figured out a trick in Photoshop and I thought I'd share. As we all know the blur tool's absolutely useless, and the smudge brush can be slow. I found that you can use the Healing Brush to simulate a sort of waterpaint-like blur that seems to work quite well for blending purposes.
Here's a quick step by step:
select the Healing Brush (shortcut:j. Otherwise, it's underneath the Spot Healing Brush)
Set the Source to 'Pattern' instead of the default 'Sampled'. Now create a new file at 10x10 pixels (I suppose 1x1px could work,haven't tried), fill it with white, select all (ctrl-a) and go to edit>define pattern. Call it 'white'.
Now select this pattern in the Healing Brush, and try it out.
It doesn't blur untill you stop painting, but otherwise it works well for quick, smooth blending. It doesn't seem to blend from outside selections, which I personally find to be a plus.
One downside is that it doesn't work on masks (despite those just being b/w images...), but that's a small niggle I think.
For those who've tried it, what do you think? I only just started using this so I'm not sure if it's a good solution, but so far it seems really nice! One thing I really like about it is that you can easily define the start and endpoint for a blur, making it easy to create both small and large blurs.
Here's a quick step by step:
select the Healing Brush (shortcut:j. Otherwise, it's underneath the Spot Healing Brush)
Set the Source to 'Pattern' instead of the default 'Sampled'. Now create a new file at 10x10 pixels (I suppose 1x1px could work,haven't tried), fill it with white, select all (ctrl-a) and go to edit>define pattern. Call it 'white'.
Now select this pattern in the Healing Brush, and try it out.
It doesn't blur untill you stop painting, but otherwise it works well for quick, smooth blending. It doesn't seem to blend from outside selections, which I personally find to be a plus.
One downside is that it doesn't work on masks (despite those just being b/w images...), but that's a small niggle I think.
For those who've tried it, what do you think? I only just started using this so I'm not sure if it's a good solution, but so far it seems really nice! One thing I really like about it is that you can easily define the start and endpoint for a blur, making it easy to create both small and large blurs.
Replies
have you tried it?
As you can see, it's more like a gaussian blur than what you'd achieve with the smudge brush, which can come in handy at times.
I'm definitely going to have to try this out. It'll be useful for evening out skin tones on textures. I've been using the smudge tool a lot lately, but it hasn't been giving the results I want without a ton of reworking things.
It can apply paint and blend at the same time. Kinda like Painter/Open Canvas