3.4

Chapter 16 Making Image Adjustments 300
Working with the Retouch Controls
An Overview of the Retouch Adjustment Controls
You use the Retouch brushes to touch up imperfections in the image caused by sensor dust,
image artifacts, and other environmental conditions. You can also copy an element of an image
and paste it in another area for purely aesthetic reasons. Aperture provides two methods for
retouching your images. The method you use depends on whether you are trying to copy
texture from the source while preserving hard edges at the destination (where the blemish is) or
simply copy pixels from one area of the image and replace them over another.
If the area you need to repair has a hard edge near the problem area, you use the “repair”
method. You also use the repair method when you want to copy high-frequency texture from
one area of the image (the source) and brush the texture over the destination area while
maintaining the underlying color and shading of the destination area.
The second method, “cloning,” is used when you simply want to copy pixels from one area and
paste them on another area. Cloning is useful when you want to copy an element of an image as
is (a cloud, for example) and paste it in another area.
Which Retouching Adjustment Should You Use?
Aperture provides two sets of controls that you can use to retouch your image: Retouch and
Spot & Patch.
In the vast majority of cases, Retouch provides the controls that will best serve your image-repair
needs. The Spot & Patch controls have been included in Aperture 3 in order to retain the integrity
of images that were adjusted with earlier versions of Aperture. In many cases, image repairs
might even be improved by removing an existing Spot & Patch repair and replacing it with a
Repair or Clone adjustment performed with the Retouch tool.
There are certain situations in which Spot & Patch is the adjustment of choice. For example, an
artifact on or very near a curved edge in an image may be more eectively removed using the
Angle parameter. For more information about the Spot & Patch adjustment controls, see Spotting
Your Images on page 310 .