The problem: A very dark and solid shadow immediately under the nose. The photo is from a photo shoot and one I gacked from the internet. It is a large photo but a rather poor scan and the shadows do not have a lot of pixels so sit like a mass. Simply selecting and making them a new layer set to a lighter blend mode such as screen, does not give a satisfactory result. Neither does a Colorfill layer because there are not enough pixels to blend into.

 

 

Enter the Patch Tool. This tool is part of the Healing Tools and can be found by right clicking the Spot Healing Tool and selecting Patch Tool. Once selected, the below Dialogue Panel opens in your workspace header bar. There are a few options for you to select. For this project I used it as shown below -New selection, Normal mode and Source to be patched by destination.

 

 

 

Before you use the Patch Tool, make a copy of your image. You will be altering the image pixels with this tool, so you should keep the original in case it all goes wrong and you need to start from scratch and, of course, for future use. I generally copy any base image as a matter of course and work on the copy. Now click on the edge of the area you want to 'patch' and holding down your left mouse button or tablet pen, draw a line around the area to select it.

 

Now drag you selection to the area of your image you would like to overwrite and blend with the selected area. Click inside the selected area and holding your left mouse button down or holding your tablet pen down, drag it across the image. You will see the area in your selection change as you move over the image. Release your dragged selection and Photoshop will process the change and blend in the pixels from your destination. To deselect click outside the selection. You may need to do this patch more than once and I did it several times on lighter areas of the face using the same selection. Simply redrag it to the area you want and release it. Here is my result after selecting a lighter area on the face to blend into the shadow. It is much lighter and there is still some texture in my shadow.

 

I wanted to get a lighter result still, so next I performed a skin graft. That is I selected an area on the face that I thought would match the color and texture I wanted. I used the patch tool to select it, but this time went to Edit - Copy - Paste. This created a new layer with my skin patch which I then moved into position below the nose. Of course it is not the shape I want so I used the Transform Warp tool - Edit - Transform -Warp. This tool places a grid over your selection and allows you to select multiple points on the grid to warp the piece into irregular shapes.

 

 

I pulled my skin graph around to fit into his nostril and up beside his nose. Once you've got it about where you think click okay to accept the changes. Then add a Layer Mask and using a soft eraser, blend the edges of your graft with the main picture. It helps at this stage to blow you image up to pixel level for a better blending job.

 

 

You can see in the above that I've removed any edges, worked the graft into the nasal shadow but not over it and made sure that his nose is completely visible. My shadow is now very light but I just want to add a Colorfill Layer to bring the skin tone of my graft into line with the shadow colors of his face.  I set this Layer to Soft Light and 75% for the result below.

 

 

 

The shadow now has the same tone as the rest of his face. What I have lost also, is the nasal philtrim, that little indentation that runs from lips to either side of the septum and gives that part of the face some definition. I am going to put it back by painting it in with Color Fill layers, a lighter one for the ridges which I continued from the existing  lines at the mouth and continues to the nose. I've probably come in a little close at the top lhs but you can see what I'm aiming for and already my image is looking a lot better than the one above with no lines.

 

 

 

and a darker one for the indentation:

 

 

 

 

There is more work to do on the image and more shadows to lighten. The original image

 

 

Shadows lightened under nose, lip and chin using the above method of the Patch Tool, skin graft and Color Fill layer. The neck shadow was selected in several sections and the darker area required several repeats of the Patch. The Patch tool was used on the the same image copy and Color Fill layers were created for each area. I did use both the Spot Healing brush and the Healing Brush on the chin and neck to blend in the results of the patch tool. The image is now ready to use the command to copy and create a new merged copy and continue with adjustments and textures, depending on the project.

 

 

Hopefully some of you will find the Patch tool a useful addition to your manipping.

 

 

Happy Photoshopping. If you find an error or have a better way to do something please comment. Photoshop is a huge learning curve for everyone.