Non-Destructive Editing Techniques

Non-destructive Clone & Healing Tools

Principle:  Do not changing any pixels in your image until you absolutely have to
Technique:  The use of the Clone Stamp tool, the Spot Healing brush, and the Healing brush do their job by copying one part of the image to another part of the image.  If the copying is done to a separate layer then it becomes a non-destructive process.  This process can also be used for the paint brush tool as well as the patch tool in CS2.
  1. Create a new blank layer above the image to which the clone stamp tool is to be applied.  Name it Clone Stamp.
  2. Turn off any adjustment layers that are above the Clone Stamp layer.
  3. Check the box "Sample All Layers"
  4. With the Clone Stamp layer active apply the clone stamp tool as you would normally do.
  5. The image that your are copying will go onto the Clone Stamp layer.
  6. If you copy too much you may erase the erant portion.
  7. You may apply the Spot Healing brush, the Healing brush, and the Paint brush to this or different layers.

Non-destructive Dodge & Burn

Principle:  Do not changing any pixels in your image until you absolutely have to
Technique:  When you dodge and burn it normally is a very destructive way of correcting your image.  However, in this technique the actual dodging and burning is done on a separate neutral gray layer and then using the magic of blending modes, transerfering the effect to the layer without actually changing pixels on the original layer.

  1. Create a new blank layer.  Name it Dodge/Burn
  2. Click on the background color indicator in the tool bar to bring up the color picker dialog box.
  3. In the dialog box enter 128 in to the R box, the G box and the B box.  This is neutral grey.
  4. With the paint bucket tool selected and the Dodge/Burn layer active click anywhere on the image to paint the entire Dodge/Burn layer neutral grey.
  5. Change the blending mode of the Dodge/Burn layer to overlay.
  6. What you should now see is your original image unchanged.  The overlay blending mode will cause the image to lighten if blended layer has a luminescence value of less than 128 and darken the image if the luminescence value is greater than 128.
  7. With the Dodge/Burn layer active dodge (to lighten) and burn (to darken) the image as you would normally do.  Except that this will lighten and darken the grey Dodge/Burn layer instead of the original image layer(s).  The overlay mode will give the effect of lightening the image itself.
  8. If you make a mistake, paint over the bad area with neutral grey, which is still the current background color.
  9. You can deliberately dodge or burn too much and soften the effect by changing the opacity of the Dodge/Burn layer.

High Pass Sharpening

  1. Make the top layer active.
  2. Do a "Stamp Visible" by pressing Shift-Control-Alt E.  This is the same as Merge Visible except that it will put the results in its own layer above the current active layer and leave all the existing layers in place.
  3. Double click on the name of the new layer and rename it "High Pass"
  4. Click on "Filter" then "Convert for Smart Filters"  (skip this step if you are not using CS3)
  5. For course sharpening lick on "Filter" then on "Other" then on "High Pass".  Set Pixels to 5.0 and click OK.
  6. Make the top layer active
  7. Repeat step 2 (skip this step if using CS3 and you did step 4)
  8. For fine sharpening lick on "Filter" then on "Other" then on "High Pass".  Set Pixels to 1.0 and click OK.
  9. Set the mode of the High Pass layer to "hard light"
  10. Set the opacity of the High Pass layer to 50%.