Help with healing brush for scratch on negative in Photoshop

[Richard G]

I've just rescanned a rather curled negative set and there's a new scratch. I want to use the Healing Brush in the latest Photoshop. There's so much on this on the web but NONE of it is actually helpful unless I sit through another few dozen videos, maybe. Could someone please help me with the detailed sequence of steps to heal a scratch? It is mostly straight but curves a little at the end and it crosses some complex detail.

I just want a list of steps including whether to shift click or option and hold down something or whatever. I have spent an hour or two on this with zero result. Photoshop is far from intuitive.

 

[astro8]

Hi Richard. To remove a scratch I've found the best way (for me) is to use the spot healing brush tool.

Press 'j', set Mode: Normal and set radio button to 'Content-Aware'.
To remove a straight scratch click to define the start point, then click whilst holding down 'shift' at the end point of the scratch. The rest of the curved scratch area should be able to be removed just by clicking on or drawing along the areas with the same tool.

With a little practice and you will be removing scratches almost unaware of the motions you are making.

Hope this helps...

 

[bobbyrab]

I'm no expert and these are all results I've come to through messing about rather than educating myself properly.
Brush A. is more automated for more simple repairing, you do not select an area with this brush, PS will analyse the surrounding area and do a good job of repairing. Not so good with detailed or areas or areas of contrast.

Brush B you have to select the sample area [hold alt then click on area] you want the brush to sample from, my most used brush it generally works really well but can go wrong with monotone areas with noise or grain, in these situations it's sometimes a good idea to make the target and sample areas match more closely by using the clone tool first to get an approximation, then use this repair brush and it blends well for the most part.
the patch tool C, is good for very specific areas and has the added advantage of showing what it's going to do, select an area then holding down your mouse click, position the new selection over the repair area, you can then line up the selection and see what it will do before you let the selection go. good for detail areas. With all these tools avoid asking it to bridge too wide an area of contrast. Sometimes smaller areas are better and build slowly.

 

[Ronald M]

Use as small a brush as possible. Make short strokes where background changes.

Consider clone tool. Magnify the image to 200% Select the scratch area. move to non scratch area. Release.

 

[lawrence]

I know it's slightly off topic but I find the AKVIS Retoucher invaluable for this sort of thing.

 

[Richard G]

Thanks guys. I cracked it. I used the healing brush for long stretches of predictable brickwork, ensuring my source lined up at the same level perpendicular to the scratch, so it repeated the grouting, coping and other details. For the oblique architecture I used the context specific spot healing brush as noted by astro8. I'm going to check out your suggestion too Lawrence. Thanks all.

 

[Vince Lupo]

Can you show us the scratch in the photo?