Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 4:10 pm Post subject: SMUDGE acting more like smear
I have recently switched from Corel Paintshop to Photoshop CS6. So far I have done well in finding equivalent tools. However, I am defeated by SMUDGE. In Paintshop, smudge does an excellent job in blending smoothly together the pixels swept by the tool, without introducing any artifacts. However, PS smudge in my use so far, acts more like active finger painting (NOT activated in tool menu) instead of the passive smudging/blending I seek. Therefore, if I try to smooth a rough area of blue sky to a uniform natural gradation, PS smudge continually introduces contrasting smears, such that sky becomes continuously less uniform instead of more.
I would appreciate advice on how to use SMUDGE or another tool, to achieve the smooth artifact-free blending I seek.
There are a few 3rd Party Filters on the market that will remove artifacts and noise such as Topaz DeNoise and Topaz DeJpeg just to name a couple.
The filters put simply are gaussian blur the image the image while keeping the edges sharp.
This can be done in Photoshop manually by duplicating the image onto a new layer, desaturating it, using the find edges filter, then copying the result into a layer mask of another duplicate layer, then using the gaussian blur filter on this layer.
So you have original pic on bottom with sharp edges, then smooth blur layer on top with the edges masked out, giving overall look of smooth with reasonably crisp edges.
With smudge your going to get the smear look happening around contrasting colors and tones because that's just how the tool works. (dragging and smearing the pixels around on the canvas)
If your just doing spot fixes then maybe try a selectively masked blur layer, same as above however instead of edges being masked.. black the whole thing out and just brush in the edits the same as you have been doing with the smudge tool.
Thanks Auieos for detailed reply. Typically, my problem images have top 1/3 as blue sky, with gradated blues from horizon to zenith. Unevenness arises from removal using spot healing brush of hundreds of dust motes and other blemishes from the 45 year old Kodachrome slides I have scanned. Therefore, the fix has to maintain the gradation of the blue. I am not clear whether your proposed technique will maintain this. However, thanks for the information.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
