hmm.. was about to ask the same question just now as a post just put up a few days... but I dunno if it slightly different..so putting up a new post. Pardon.. a thousand apologies.

I'm working on scans of very old pachment, cleaning it up.  I use the clone tool to clone over spots.. but at times..esp if it is a huge area and a new layer from  the old layer won't work..I enlarge the brush using the slider tool.. and clone.

At times..the area that I need to use the clone tool on is a  large. area. I use a large brush. But I've noticed that the cloned spots are fuzzy. There is a slight difference on the parchment paper. Not noticeable when printed..but for clarity and factual sake..i need to keep it the same.

Question.. how do brushes work? Say I choose fuzzy 12.. and use the slider to increase the brush size to 200. What changes? Just the size of the brush, and or not the fuzziness size?
If I use a 200 fuzzy brush.. what is the difference between that brush and the increased 12 brush resized to 12?

I use the fuzzy brushes to 'melt' the clone section.

Is there a way to increase the brush size and not the fuzzy area? Do I need to go back to photoshop school..i'll happily do that,.

Any help will be so gratefully received. Thanks a gazillion ..

Cheers

Rosie, I’m not sure of what you’re asking but from what I gather I think you’re asking about the brush size and the “fuzzy” soft edge of the brush. The size of the brush and the softness can be controlled independently in several ways.  First, (while brush tool is selected) by using the brush palette. Once the brush palette is opened select “brush presets” there you will find “Master Diameter”. This controls the brush size in pixels. Then select “brush tip shape” there you can select “hardness”. This slider controls the brush softness in percentages.

 

Secondly, once the brush tool is selected…up at the top menu bar you’ll see the brush size with a dot and a number underneath it. Clicking on this will drop a window down with both sliders: brush diameter size and brush hardness.

 

Thirdly, the brush size can be controlled using the keyboard shortcut keys while the brush tool is selected. The bracket keys “ [ ] “will control the brush size. Also, holding down the shift key and tapping the bracket keys will control the “hardness” and it can be seen while watching the brush circle in the menu bar as it will change the edge appearance. I hope this helps.

Aha..Quest!  :woot: you answered exactly what I wanted! Bless ya!! Thank you! You are a life saver! :wub:

And thank you for the shortcuts! Phew.. you can't imagine what a relief it is to know all this!

Cheers

I'll put in 2¢, even though you already have one solution.

It sounds like you might need to get familiar with the patch tool. If you're doing what I think you're doing, then that's probably the tool to use and not the clone or healing brush. If you do the pullout where the healing brush is, it's in that grouping.

It has two modes though. I know that in one you can just draw a line around an area you want to copy over. Then you drag that over the area you want to fill in and it auto-magically blends it. It works great for dealing with tears and water spots and things of that nature.

pauljs..  :wub: .. i need that to clean up one painting that was scanned completely with it's 300 yr old dust! Was looking at it petrified.. two of them to do..and a deadline of two weeks. Looks so like what I need!
Will have a go at it and let you know how it goes.. working on something else now.. attacking the two scanned paintings tmrow onwards...

Pauljs.. will work a bit..though the clean up takes more than that! I'm experimenting with the heal tool too.. this is a tiny version of what I have to clean up. Think of each leaf too!

That's some job Rosie. Lots of work to be done there. The spot healing brush, healing brush, patch brush, clone stamp tool, blur tool and smudge tool are all used for this type of work. Do a google search for Photoshop restoration tutorials many excellent ideas out there for this. And when you're finished with it you can send it to me. It would look good on my wall. ;-)

lol.. quest.. copyrighted.. :-p

Most of the restoration work I do isn't that bad.. remove wires, ancient folds and water stains, unwanted ights, clean up patches, remove this and that, remove cement from metal clamps etc.. One bad one was remove a wire that ran across a window, over archs that had writing.. and over the writing too! Had to clean up writing!  Ok..sometimes..it can be stupidly tough.. but this is a nitemare..

Been told if it's tough, stress not.. but something in me wants to tackle it..

Lol..I'll show you my progress thru it!

Cheers

I think if you do purges more often it can help especially when doing loads of anything to do with the Brush tool.

File > Purge > Undo/Clipboard/History or better yet All. 

Dreamer! Purge for me is in my 'edit'..and it's grey so it won't let me do anything.. !! whoopsey!

My bad. It is in the Edit menu. When you first open an image they would be greyed out as there is nothing to Undo, remove from Clipboard or history. As you work on image brush strokes or cloning/healing/patches build up really fast as you can see in your History palette. Clipboard when you copy/cut anything. The Purge will no longer be greyed out. 
 
Also in Preference how much memory you are allowing Photoshop to use can be adjusted. If you have other programs open, Photoshop should be the last one to be opened for it to better analyse total memory and memory used.

I've been watching tons of video tutorials on lynda.com . I had a free month as a benefit when I registered my Adobe Design Standard CS4 suite. Going from CS to CS4 was a big jump. My brain is being filled with all the new stuff and old stuff I never knew about. Gotta say I'm loving the Rotate View tool along with the Birdseye view! Makes repairs so much easier when viewed at the right angle.

Ah.thank you.
yup//been debating to upgrade to CS4. I might do that...

dreamer..did that.. got it..
thanks..will keep doing that,..

Here’s a quickie preview of what it may be restored to. This is a labor intensive procedure depending on what the actual size of the image is. With a larger image you may be able to find some unblemished areas from which to sample from. This small image offered very few clean areas. Basically I used the healing tool set to normal with alignment off and constantly resizing the brush using the current layer because you never work on the original layer background in case you have to fall back on it. Also it’s best to use a copy of the original instead of the original itself. I also used the blur tool in some areas where you may start to get artifacts from brush texturing from repeated use. In some difficult areas such as in between the tree leaves here you may have to resort to eyedrop sampling a clean color from behind the leaves and using a soft brush set at about 45% opacity gently touch up the dirty color and use the blur tool if you have to. After finishing I then copied the retouched image layer placing it on a top layer and made this new layer  mode "soft light" set at 50% opacity to make the colors pop.

P.S. I also posted this in your thread in the Bryce forum.

Ahhh...sorry Rosie I just notice on reread…although I did use the healing brush the brush I use most was the clone stamp tool on your image. Here’s a family photo restoration I recently worked on. The little girl standing on the left is my mother who died two years ago at age 82 and the only picture that exists  of her at that age, her sister sitting in the middle who died 2 ½  months before she did at age 85, and her brother who passed away a few months ago at age 87. My cousin in Florida sent me the picture when her dad (the boy in the picture) died. Still a work in progress.