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I. LICENSE

II. TO INSTALL

III. TO APPLY

IV. WHAT MEND DOES

V. SUGGESTIONS FOR USE

VI. PATCHING LARGE AREAS WITH MEND

VII. PATRON ACTION

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The Mend tool is copyrighted by Richard Lynch: Copyright © 2004. Purchase of a single user license for this product allows the license owner to use the tool on one machine concurrently. That is, if the owner of the license has several computers, the tool can be in use on any one of these at any time, and can be installed on each. Other users should purchase their own license.

The tools can not be redistributed, altered for distribution under another name, or resold.

For questions about permissions, site licenses, functionality or enhancement, please contact Richard Lynch directly: thebookdoc@aol.com or through the website: http://hiddenelements.com. Support for the mend tool can be discussed in the forum at retouchpro.com:

http://retouchpro.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=142

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1. Unzip the Mend.zip file. If you do not have an unzip utility, you can get one on the internet.

2. Place in the unzipped Mend folder into the Effects Folder. The folder should be moved as a unit.

3. Delete the Previews Cache.

4. Restart Elements and rebuild the preferences. To rebuild the preferences, hold down the Command+Option+Shift/Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys on the keyboard immediately after restarting. Hold the keys down until the prompt to rebuild appears, and click [YES]. This will restore default settings and palette placements.

8. Define the sample area by Alt/Option + clicking the clone tool in the sample area. The Use All Layers option needs to be checked.

9. Apply the clone tool over the damage. One stroke over the damage is preferred, but you can experiment with other possibilities. Cover the entire area where the damage is.

10. Run the Apply portion of the Clone Meld. This will take you through many steps--mostly invisible to you. Some input is required mostly having to do with values you will determine using your brush size.

11. You may want to adjust the Mend's Color or Tone layers to better fit the result to the image. In many cases this will not be necessary.

12. Flatten the image by pressing Command/CTRL + E.

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The purpose of the Mend tool is to mimic the Healing tool in Photoshop. Healing is supposed to help users make repairs to damage in images. It works best on isolated damage (better at picking up an eye-lash on a cheek than a stray hair at the hairline).

The mend tool attempts to make smart, automated corrections based on image content. It takes the texture from the cloned source (by comparing it to the blurred version) and applies that to a blurred background...creating a new texture on a smoothed tone. The color of the original background area surrounding the clone is melded with the clone color, blurred, and then the hue of the clone is applied. Blurring the base of the clipping masks then blends in the result. It transfers only the texture, hue, and part of the color, using the general tone and part of the color from the original area. It is actually pretty educational, and may be worth taking a long slow look at (if you have the free hidden power tools, you can slow down the playback).

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The Mend tool can be used for spot cleaning in addition to the Clone Stamp, and can often make quick work of lines, wrinkles, dust specks, and other damage in relatively isolated image areas. Correcting damage in areas where you expect to do a lot of cleanup can lead to some unexpected results because of the blurring and comparisons between the sample and the original area.

While this tool can simplify some more complicated corrections, using it indiscriminately is not recommended, because of the blurring and blending behaviors. If you can’t match the following criteria when going to use the Mend tool, you may want to use the Clone Stamp or another patching method.

• Use only if you can cover the entire area of damage with the source in one step.
• Don’t use it if you will apply or sample near the edge of areas that contrast significantly in tone or color with that sample or target.
• Be sure the source is the texture you want to replace in the target.

If you don’t cover the entire spot, damage, etc.–with a little overlap–that uncovered damage area will be used in samples to calculate the result, and will blend (really blur) back in as part of the correction. Because the result samples pixels around the target, getting too close to an area that contrasts in tone with the area you are sampling from or correcting will make for a bad result. Texture should be the main consideration; think of it as the noise or difference between light and dark in the sample area.

What really ends up getting placed is not so much the sample as the texture of the sample, which is lightened or darkened based on an average of the tone in the area surrounding the target.

When using Mend, cleaning up a stray eyelash fallen on a cheek is different (easier and more straight-forward) than cleaning stray hairs right at a dark hairline (or the edge of a tattoo): getting too close to the hairline will tend to shade the ‘Mended’ area unnaturally.

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Though the Mend function was designed to work in conjunction with the Clone Stamp, you can experiment with using it to patch larger areas as you would with Photoshop's Patch tool. To do this you would make a selection of the background to act as a replacement rather, than using the Clone Stamp tool, then paste in the patch and run the Mend function. In this case there is no need to run the setup. Patching may be more appropriate for some types of damage, but patching very large areas is not recommended.

1. Open the Effects palette and choose Mend from the drop list.

2. Open an image with potential damage that you would like to try to Mend.

3. Identify the damaged area that you want to fix (look at the image only, take no action).

5. Zoom into the image so you can see the damage and the area you will be cloning from.

6. Create a selection around the damaged area that you will want to replace. To do this, any selection tool or combination will work. You may want to try the Lasso tool (press L). The Options for the selection tool should be set to create a selection with 0 Feathering.

7. Position the selection over the donor area by clicking inside the selection and dragging the selection into place.

8. Copy and Paste the selected area (press Command/CTRL+C then Command/CTRL+V). This will create a new layer with the area from the background included in the selection.

9. Change to the Move tool (press V) and position the sampled area over the damage.

10. Run the Apply portion of the Clone Meld. When asked to input values based on brush size, you will want to use a distance equal to an average width of the patch.

11. You may want to adjust the Mend's Color or Tone layers to better fit the result to the image. In many cases this will not be necessary.