Artist Reflection for Project 3
     The best technical aspect was using the spot healing brush tool to remove the blemishes. Using this I was able to use the normal looking skin and use those colors brushed over the freckles and irritated skin spots. The result is that she looks like she had no skin disorder. Although this was my best technical aspect, it could have been improved some. If someone were to zoom in on the picture and investigated it closely, the patterns that I used my healing brush for can be seen. Maybe if I were to experiment with more sizes of the brush and use different patterns to mask blemishes it would create a more authentic looking result.
      The easiest part would be to use the tool to simply cover up the blemish. Click from one spot and drag is easy. The harder part is to be careful on what sort of displacement it creates with the colors. Sometimes the hair is on the very edge of the range and would create an orange streak through the skin. Other times it is the shadows that affect the tool. To see if a questionable stroke helped, I would quickly hit the "command" and "z" buttons to undo and redo, and a good portion of the work was left undone due to the difficulties I mentioned, and tried a different angle. This made the project easier by helping me understand how the brush worked better.
     I had achieved the goal of removing the blemishes by making her natural skin tone go over irritated skin points and freckles (and at one time an annoying strand of hair). Another objective was to change the eye color, but that would in the end make the picture worse because in her eyes the observer can see the bride and groom. Changing the eye color would distort the reflection in her eyes. This was an enjoyable activity in which if I had to do it again I would use another picture. I would also dabble more with the paint brush. In this project I didn't use it more than a few times, and it proved to help with spots that the healing brush couldn't seem to fix.

(The original)

 (The altered)