AFTERGLOW | Night 10 | Thu Oct 22

Clean Plate

Retouching night. Take a messy street photo, straighten it, erase everything that shouldn't be there, and make it look like nobody touched it. Then slap a title on it with real style.

Crop + StraightenSpot HealingRemove toolClone StampPatchContent-Aware FillFree Transform + WarpSmart FiltersLayer styles

What a complete project looks like

Picture a real estate listing photo. The "before" is what your phone took: a little crooked, with a trash can, a cone, a sign, a dust speck, a wire across the sky. The "after" is the same street, level, and every one of those things is gone without a trace. On top, a title with a stroke, a shadow and a glow.

The horizon or building edges are straight, and it's cropped to 4:5.
At least four things removed, using at least three different tools. Nobody can point to where they were.
The repairs sit on their own layers above the photo, so you can turn them off and see the before.
The finished picture is a Smart Object with one Smart Filter.
A title that you transformed (rotated, warped, or skewed) with three layer styles: Stroke, Drop Shadow, Outer Glow.
You hand in .psd plus a before .jpg and an after .jpg.

Layers panel, top to bottom: Title (with fx), Final (Smart Object with a Smart Filter), Fill, Patch, Retouch, Photo.

Grab one messy photo

Free, no account. Look for a street, storefront, or house with stuff in the way: people walking by, trash cans, signs, cones, wires. Bonus if it's a little crooked. Clean photos give you nothing to fix.

Photos on Pexels Photos on Unsplash Warm up: Heal Lab

Cold open: copy vs blend

Every retouching tool tonight does one of two things:

Clone Stamp copies. It takes pixels from one spot and pastes them exactly, color and all. Perfect for hard edges and patterns, like a brick line or a window frame. On a smooth sky it leaves a visible patch.
The healing tools blend. Healing Brush, Spot Healing, Patch and Remove take the texture from somewhere else but match the color and brightness of where you're painting. Great on skin, sky and pavement. On a hard edge they smear.

Rule of thumb: edges and lines, clone. Everything soft, heal. The exam loves asking which one you'd reach for. Try both in Heal Lab before you open Photoshop.

The build

Done with this step

Self-check before you turn it in

In or out. Every box gets a check, or it's not done yet.

Straightened and cropped to 4:5, with Delete Cropped Pixels turned off.
At least four things removed, and you can't tell where they were at 100% zoom (Ctrl+1).
You used at least three of these: Spot Healing, Remove, Clone Stamp, Patch, Content-Aware Fill.
Repairs live on their own layers, not painted into Photo.
Final is a Smart Object with a Smart Filter on it.
The title was transformed (rotate, skew, or warp) and has Stroke, Drop Shadow and Outer Glow.
Saved as LastName_CleanPlate.psd.
Two JPGs: LastName_Before.jpg and LastName_After.jpg.

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