Heal spots, dust and blemishes away

Pick the tool by the flaw

Small, separate marks such as sensor dust, a blemish or a fleck of lint are jobs for the Spot Healing Brush: size the brush just larger than the spot and click or dab. Scratches across an old scanned print, a crease or a stray hair over skin suit the Healing Brush, because you choose where the replacement texture comes from. Repeating patterns and anything that must match exactly, such as brickwork or a fence line, are for the Clone Stamp.

Anything bigger, like a bin, a sign or a person in the background, is quicker with Remove object, in the same J group.

Brush settings that matter

[ and ] change the brush size, and Shift+[ and Shift+] change the hardness. A soft brush hides the join on skin and sky; a harder one keeps detail crisp along an edge. The Clone Stamp adds Opacity and Flow, so a repair can be built up in light passes.

Aligned decides whether the source moves with you: on, it travels with every stroke, which suits long scratches; off, each stroke starts again from the same source point. Sample chooses whether to copy from the Photo or the Photo with edits, and Pen pressure can drive size, opacity or both on a tablet.

Skin retouch, gently

For a natural skin retouch, remove the temporary things, such as spots, small marks and stray hairs, and leave the skin’s texture alone. Work at 100% zoom with short strokes, and take the source from skin lit the same way so the tone matches. Use Compare before / after now and then; if a cheek starts to look plastic, undo a few strokes rather than painting over them.

Free, private photo retouching online

To remove dust spots from a landscape or scratches from a scan, all four tools, the Spot Healing Brush, Healing Brush, Clone Stamp and Remove object, are on the free plan. They work on JPEG, PNG, WebP, PSD and Camera RAW files. Retouching runs on your device, so portraits and client work are never uploaded. Save a project to come back later, or a Photoshop (PSD) file.