A close-up look at Adobe Lightroom 5 beta's new Advanced Healing Brush. Although you can see a video from Adobe showing off Adobe Lightroom 5 betas's Advanced Healing Brush, I wanted to show some examples at 100% so we can really take a close look at this new tool. Often times I find a video will really show a new software feature but when you scrutinize it at 100% the results can be disappointing. First off, here's Adobe's video showing the new tool.
Now let's look at a real world example. One thing I often have to retouch is logos off of shoes. Take for example the NBA logo on these high tops. I'll first look at the side logo then the one on the tongue. The full image is first so you can see how close I'm working.
First I painted the area to be retouched and the results are below.
The sampled selection does not match so I looked around the image for a better match. The other areas on the high-top didn't quite fit so I sampled from another shoe. Even though, the other shoe was a different color, and different texture, it was a better match because both areas were relatively smooth. The match is not perfect, and it's up to you if it done well enough. There is a mis-match of texture most noticeable on the right. Remember this is at 100% so when zoomed out, the texture will be less noticeable. This example illustrates that you can ignore color when looking for a sample area.
Now for a the logo on the tongue, a similar problem. Adobe Lightroom 5 beta again sampled from a nearby area that wasn't a good match, so I moved the sample to the top of the toe area. The sampled area has a crease which transferred to the new area.
Conclusions
It's a major advantage to be able to paint in a selection rather than be confined to a perfect circle. My first two efforts offered mix results but I'm still optimistic about their promise. For best results you will need a good area to sample, but that has always been the case. Adobe should be applauded for their efforts to improve the retouching tools in Lightroom even if they overlap with the features of their flagship program Photoshop.