How to use the Patch Tool and Fade Tool in Photoshop

Rating: 4.25 based on 4 Ratings
  By Julian
How to use the Patch Tool and Fade Tool in Photoshop www.sleeklens.com

Hello everyone, welcome to another great Photoshop tutorial.

Today we’ll be talking about how to use the Patch Tool and the Fade Tool to smooth out bl

Fade Tool to improveemishes on skin and remove wrinkles so make your images look amazing!

These Tools are life savers, they’re great.

If I was you this would be one of the techniques for Retouchers that I would have on my top 10 list every time.

Looking at our image it’s cool, it’s a wonderful photo, but to a Retouchers eye, there is parts in it that we can change up a little using our Retouching Tools, such as under the eyes and round the cheeks etc.

First thing I’d like you to do is to hit Ctrl J and create a new layer.

I try to include shortcuts such as Ctrl J (Command J on the Mac) as much as possible because using shortcuts really cuts down the time when working over a long period and if you have deadlines and stuff this will help you improve as a Freelancer or whatever your chosen area or career, hobby which ever.

Then we’ll open up our Patch Tool, Shown below.

You have a few options that you can choose in the Patch Tool which we don’t need to go into so for now lets just keep it on normal & source.

How you use the Patch Tool is you click on an area draw around that, then release and you will see a selection like so.

It’s super simple.

Click on your selection now and drag it to an area on the models face that is similar and that blends in with the area you are trying to cover up.

You will see that the area can look a little dissimilar around the edges and kind of looks pretty unrealistic, this is where I will use the Fade Tool to improve that and give it a better transition into the blend so you can hardly tell if at all that the area has been retouched or not, which is exactly what we want.

When you see a professionally retouched image with wonderful blends and transitions, then you know that is the level where your blending needs to be at.

You will find the Fade Tool right after you have executed a task such as doing just what we were doing in Edit – Fade Patch Selection

The short cut is Shift + Control + F

It’s kind of strange to me too because this is a Tool that not that many people know about.

What it does is as the name suggests is Fades any last command, so for example if I painted over something and I use the Fade Tool is will bring down it’s opacity.

There is other ways to do this like working on separate layers and so forth but this can get messy if a lot of work is being carried out making this the better of the two options in my opinion.

So keep the Fade Tool in mind because it can be used to Fade out any action you just did.

As you can see the Fade Tool has an opacity slider which you are going to use to Fade out, at 100% it will look a little fake but as you Slide the opacity down you will start to see the image blend in and look more natural and real.

The areas that you want to target will be at the edge of the cheeks joining on to the nose, under the eyes and any blemishes that you find that sticks out.

Don’t be afraid go over an area several times and try out this Tool, like if you wanted to make two or 3 layers to start out and practice to get your confidence up then I would suggest you do so as it will really help you, trust me, when I was learning new Tools i would list them down and drill them every so often, plus the added bonus of how fast you can work with this Tool you should be pretty much up to speed in no time at all.

So that is what I have for you today I hope that it helps you out a lot.

Remember this Tool while you’re doing your retouching sessions because it really is an excellent Tool.

Want to know how to correct white balance in Photoshop, ACR or LR?

Rating: 4.25 based on 4 Ratings
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Julian

Graduated from college in 2002 with a degree in Art & Design, I started exploring my way in Graphic Design and Professional Post Production. Full-time freelancer since 2011.

Comments (1)

  1. kit kerner Guest
     

    I recently discovered the ‘Patch’ tool and really like it, but something has happened. The result of my ‘patching’ starts off as faded and I can’t seem to find out what I did. It has worked perfectly before. Thanks in advance. Kit