Avoiding smoothness with healing brush tool

[BH888]

Newbie Question:

Used healing brush to retouch out a severe case of rosacea, which was present on only one of the subject’s cheeks (male subject).

When I now compare retouched cheek with the other (normal) cheek, there is a texture difference; i.e., texture on retouched cheek is noticeably smoother than texture on normal cheek, which looks fine as is.

Could I have avoided creating a differential smoothing effect on the cheeks when I used the healing brush?

Is there a way to now equalize the texture on both cheeks by reducing the smoothness (or adding texture back in) on the one cheek?  Normal cheek is fine as is.

[Norman Sanders · Accepted solution]

Without seeing the image any recommendation is little more than a guess but you will find that the Patch tool maintains texture superior to changes made with the Healing Brush. If you post a section of the image so that we an see the rosacea and the unblemished side of the face, and your objective, we may be able to suggest more specific retouching options.

[Stephen Marsh]

A quick and dirty method is to add noise to add some texture back. I would use a feathered selection and fade the noise back to luminosity mode and or reduced opacity.

Yes, you can use the texture from the unretouched side to add life back to the retouched side. Frequency separation is one method. Here are a couple of actions to help:

Dropbox - Frequency Splitter v2B.atn.zip - Simplify your life

Dropbox - Frequency Splitter v3 Conditional.atn.zip - Simplify your life

Another quick approach would be to simply copy the texture to a new layer, flip/transform/position, apply the high pass filter, change the layer to soft light or one of the other similar blending modes and mask or erase as required.

[BH888]

Thank you both for your suggestions.  Being a newbie to PS, I figured I would try the simplest of solutions; - redo the rosacea corrections using the patch tool.  Worked like a charm!  Retained more of the texture and avoided the polished look of the healing brush.

Many thanks.