PhotoShop Elements help, please

Factual Questions
1

I’m a NewB, need a couple of simple questions answered:

  1. Healing Brush and Clone Stamp used to show me a circle where I’m moving the cursor. I must have hit a key or something, now it shows a +. How do I get the circle back?
  2. When using the Healing Brush, it takes into account the adjacent colors and fades them into the spot where I’m pasting. I want to modify that. Let me make up an example: suppose I want to paste some grass next to a fence. I don’t want the grass to take on the tone of the (much darker) fence, but I do want it to blend in with the rest of the grass around it. How do I make that happen?

Thanks!

2

I use Photoshop CS3, not Elements, but I might be able to help.

For your first question, there should be a “Cursors” area under Preferences. Choose something like “normal brush tip” or “full size brush tip”.

For your second question, you might want to use the clone stamp tool instead of the healing brush. If not, there should be an option for increasing the “hardness” of the brush. Try turning it up closer to 100%.

3

Yeah for 2) I would use the clone stamp with the hardness turned down below 50%. If the brush is too hard it won’t blend in as well.

4

I hate when that happens!

Preferences > Displays and Cursors > (select) Brush Size