HOW TO HEAL ON A BLANK LAYER

One of the cornerstones of professional retouching is to always perform your retouches on their own separate layer. That way you never "bruise" (damage) the pixels of the original image. However, when using the Healing Brush in Photoshop 7.0, you really had no choice you had to use it on the same layer. In Photoshop CS2, you can heal to another layer. But first, there's a little setting you have to change. Get the Healing Brush from the Toolbox, then up in the Options Bar, turn on the checkbox for Sample All Layers. Next, click on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a new blank layer above your Background layer and do your "healing" there.