Healing Brush Problem (PSCS5)

Question

Hi there, today my friend was creating tilable textures using the Offset tool, and then taking the Healing Brush tool to fix up the bad edges between the tiles. This has worked forever on his PC, but now suddenly is causing distortion when he uses it. Instead of having a soft edge to the healing brush marks, it comes out with distorted, pixelated edges.
Things to note:
• all other tools with soft edges work fine
• if the file is saved out as a different file format the problem is saved with it (still visible)
• only happens in CS5
• the pixelation on the edges of the brush strokes are solid color and don't look the same as what happens if turing a layer to dissovle or anything
• Photoshop CS5 Extended 64bit, Windows 7 64bit, GTX 260
-Thanks

Answer 1

So let me make sure I fully understand what is being attempted:
You're using the Healing Brush to essentially clone pixels from another part of the image to an area of the image that's transparent.  You expect the soft edge of the brush to leave the edge of the result soft.
I think I can reproduce what you're seeing.  Notably the blending doesn't seem to work properly either.
Here's what I see while brushing, then after I let up on the mouse button:
I think the real problem here is that it really doesn't seem to make much sense to use the Healing Brush on a transparent part of the image.  It's prime function is to mix the result in with the surroundings.  What are the surroundings in a transparent area?  At best, you might hope to get white pixels there.
Some ideas that might help you work around this issue:
1.  Use a layer mask to manage the transparency, and have the pattern entirely there in the image.  In other words, separate the texture prep entirely from the transparency prep.
2.  Use the Clone Stamp tool instead of the Healing Brush if you really need to brush over transparent pixels.
-Noel