Several years ago I was presenting at a Royal Photographic Society (RPS) event in Rugby, (UK). I fell into conversion with a lady member – no names to protect the innocent. Loosely, the conversation went like this:
Me: Do you use Photoshop?
She: Yes, use it all the time
Me: What’s its best feature?
She: The crop tool – I use Photoshop for the crop tool.
Me: What about the layers and ….
She: I only use the crop tool
Me: …”only”?….bbbbut it has many other features…
She: It’s simply the best crop tool around.
Me: …have you tried usi…
She: I like the way the bit you’re cropping goes grey before you accept the crop.
Me: …but there’s a stack of other funct…
She: Look, it’s the best crop tool and that’s what I use Photoshop for.
Me: …so are you saying you paid six hundred quid for a crop tool?
She: Yes and let me tell you, young man, it’s the best crop tool by far.
Then she walked off.
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Incroyable – as they say round these parts.
This Step-by-Step Guide might read a bit like the conversation above, but a) I wouldn’t shell-out £600 for piece of software that only offered one feature; and b) I do know how to use all the functions that Photoshop has to offer However…the Spot Healing Brush Tool, to give it its proper title, is bloody wonderful and as I’ll show here, it got me out of a serious piece of bother for this picture that I wanted to include in my, (successful), RPS Licentiate submission.
Date first published - 23 March 2012
© 2023-2012 Studio Lavalette
