I just did adjustments to an image in hue/saturation and selective color (through adjustment layers).

I left the image in layers and went back to it a few times for re-editing.

To my shock the image got unusable, as the spots repaired with the healing brush show with a magenta cast. You see the exact area of the repair - like you can see phosphor spots under a certain light.

Now I'm wondering what I did wrong. Maybe some menu item in the healing brush checked wrong?

Shouldn't skin retouching with the healing brush be invisible?


edit: I did several re-edits on that image - readjustments to the adjustment layers. Could it have ruined those pixels that I changed with the healing brush?

edit: I just found the button "ignore adjustment layers" in the healing brush tool. Is it recommended to click it when using the healing brush?

I went back to the original file and had not problem doing it.

One other time I had weird healing brush behavior. It added a red cast to the healing work.

I found out, that, even though I had an additional layer for retouching work, I was, accidentally, working on the background layer.

When I activated the layer used for retouching, the red cast went away.

No idea what was going on here.

When an image has several layers and the layers have non-empty layer masks and/or opacity levels less than 100 % then you're looking at several layers at the same time. The healing brush however (or any tool) will work on the active layer only. So the tool will work on a different image than what you're seeing.

If you want a tool or filter to see, and to work on, the same image that you are seeing (i. e. the image resulting from combining all visible layers) then you'll have to flatten the image, or to merge all visible layers into a new layer, before applying the tool or filter.

-- Olaf

Actually, I had my healing brush set to "all layers", and it was only one background layers with multiple adjustment layers.

It seemed to happen when I did my retouching on a separate layer (which I can delete if I mess up), but, by error, once or twice ended up retouching the background layer directly.

When I went back to my retouching layer, everything else was OK again.

Regarding flattening, I never flatten my images.

When I go to print, I make another copy ("edit copy with LR adjustements"). This will flatten the image automatically. Then I sharpen, but can always go back to the original file to make adjustments.

I guess I will never use the flatten image command again, only work through copies.

So far I have not found any disadvantage of my workflow.

Which mode do you have the healing brush in? Is it normal? Change it to replace I find that in normal a cast sometimes appears

I work in both replace and normal mode, and the cast has no correlation to the mode used.

One other weird thing happens sometimes.

After applying the healing brush, a shadow appears where it was used, and it has the round shape of the healing brush tool tip, only larger.

So, even if I only click on a spot, a much larger, darker shadow will appear.

I switch tool then, and when I come back it sometimes disappears. I just wonder what is causing this...