What are the best tools to remove blemishes from your photos? (2024)

Key takeaways from this article

• AI-based editing:

  Artificial intelligence in photo editing offers a range of automatic corrections, providing different variations for a natural look. It's like having an expert assistant who speeds up your workflow while keeping things looking authentic.

• Blend and balance:

  Combining frequency separation with various tools allows for tailored blemish control while preserving details. It's like being a photo surgeon, carefully treating each imperfection without losing the essence of the image.

This summary is powered by AI and these experts

• Faith Barker Your Multifamily Marketer | Marketing @…
• Sarah-Jane Field Artist

• Brian Collins Marketing Manager at OpSys Solutions

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  I've found that the spot healing brush is most effective with small blemishes, but I've used it to remove larger objects, although it takes a little more effort. The brush works best when you make small strokes at a time. Adjusting your brush size to meet the blemish is important too. Keep the brush size just a bit larger than the actual spot when possible. Small selections allow the sampling process to be more accurate.

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  This is one of the fastest ways to remove the obvious spots on a tool where the background is pretty much even. Things like little pimples or marks on skin or sensor dust specs are quite easy to remove using the spot healing brush.

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• Anna Marie Lada

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  Couldn't agree more! I call it the "band aid" for good reason. It's my go to for easy blemish concealment. I tell all my junior designers "the band aid is your friend."

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• Nik Daum Creative Director/Art Director/Designer

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  The spot healing brush in Photoshop is my go to tool for removing small imperfections, though it isn't perfect. For anything larger than a dust speck or detail in a non critical area, I use the patch tool for better results. I suspect that the AI tools in the betas of Photoshop will trickle down to make both of these tools even better than they currently are.

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• Hammad Iqbal Photographer | Designer | AI Enthusiast

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  The Spot Healing Brush is my primary tool for removing dust, scratches, imperfections, and unwanted light sources from my photos. As an architectural photographer, I frequently capture shots during the blue hour, which entails dealing with numerous small light sources and reflections. The Spot Healing Brush seamlessly addresses these scenarios by eliminating any distracting light sources that disrupt the visual flow. A brush size slightly bigger than the light source generally works great, but adjust it to see what works for you.

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• Sarah-Jane Field Artist

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  I tend to use frequency separation and then a blend of tools on the different layers. I have used AI in Photoshop Beta too which sometimes works, but it's quite often not the best option. Depends on the image and the blemish you're dealing with.

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• Aleksandar Cucukovic Teacher at Alex On Design, UI Designer at Web Donut, YouTuber and tech geek.

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  Clone stamp tool has been the standard for adding or removing parts if your image in Photoshop.If you have tricky sections like guard rails, repeating patterns or sections of grass, this is your best bet.Some might say that generative AI will do the better job but that is not always the case, especially if you want to have clean and precise selections.Make sure to explore with different brushes and brush sizes for best results.

  See Also

  What Is The Spot Healing Tool In Photoshop?The 6 best photo editing apps for iPhone and Android in 2024Edit mark in image | DocHub22 Best Free Photo Editing Software and Apps | Mailchimp

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• Hammad Iqbal Photographer | Designer | AI Enthusiast

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  The most potent secret of the Clone Stamp tool (in Photoshop) is the ability to flip the destination horizontally or vertically. This feature proves invaluable when dealing with repeating patterns like tilework or randomizing grass on a lawn. Additionally, the capability to designate up to five clone sources (in Photoshop) accelerates the editing process and spares you a considerable amount of frustration.

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• Beytan Erkmen Freelance Photographer and Technical Tutor in Photography

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  Photoshop tools are very good especially with the content aware option selected. However, traditional tools are destructive so you need to work on a new layer and, thus, it is the very last thing you would do to finalise your images as any colour correction or contrast changes are troublesome after and retouching. Also, the retouch layer is rasterised so you are working with pixels. My suggestion would be to use the camera raw interface as it is identical to Lightroom and is non-destructive and parametric editing. Each point you change with the healing tools in camera raw/Lightroom are movable, editable and can be removed at any time on the life of the file. Don't forget to save it as a .PSD as you need a master-file to create jpegs from.

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• Hammad Iqbal Photographer | Designer | AI Enthusiast

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  Even though I don't use it as much, it has its strengths. It works great in situations where you have to match not just a pattern but also the difference in hue and saturation between your source and destination. Shooting in ambient light with sources of varying color temperatures, the color bleed can be difficult to deal with when fixing patterns such as tilework. The patch tool (in Photoshop) makes it rather easy, however, it may not work when a more nuanced approach is needed.

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• Beytan Erkmen Freelance Photographer and Technical Tutor in Photography

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  Photoshop tools are very good especially with the content aware option selected. However, traditional tools are destructive so you need to work on a new layer and, thus, it is the very last thing you would do to finalise your images as any colour correction or contrast changes are troublesome after and retouching. Also, the retouch layer is rasterised so you are working with pixels. My suggestion would be to use the camera raw interface as it is identical to Lightroom and is non-destructive and parametric editing. Each point you change with the healing tools in camera raw/Lightroom are movable, editable and can be removed at any time on the life of the file. Don't forget to save it as a .PSD as you need a master-file to create jpegs from.

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• Zachary Kinovsky City Carrier at United States Postal Service

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  I find the patch tool to be more useful than it often gets credit for, and I liken it a lot to spot healing based on the way it makes my workflow more efficient. I think it's biggest strength is when you're working with a scene where a lot of similar colors and textures are needed to be applied to fix imperfections. An example would be a white background with crumbs, hairs, gashes, or scratches. The patch tool is simple in allowing you to select the problem area and simply drag it over to a cleaner section you want in it's place. While you sacrifice some of your control over your edits, it works more often than it doesn't, and saves you a lot of time in the process.

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  Frequency separation is my go-to technique for portrait retouching, and its power lies in its ability to separate the tonal values from the texture, allowing for a more nuanced approach to skin retouching.To streamline the process, I've created a custom action in Photoshop that sets up the necessary layers for frequency separation. With just a click, I can have the low-frequency and high-frequency layers ready to go, saving me precious minutes in my workflow.However, with great power comes great responsibility! It's crucial to approach frequency separation with a "less is more" mindset. Overdoing it can lead to the dreaded 'plastic skin' look, which is neither realistic nor flattering.

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• Carson Barnes, MFA Photographic printmaker; so that you may see works in progress from time to time.

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  Huh. I’ve been doing this for a long time and didn’t know it had a name. I make a lightening layer and a darkening layer from an existing layer, then darken the light, lighten the dark, snd adjust each for transparency until it looks right.

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• Hammad Iqbal Photographer | Designer | AI Enthusiast

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  When single-click tools don't cut it, frequency separation comes to the rescue. I use this when touching up marblework that may have imperfections that are too complex to fix using a clone stamp or the patch tool. Since this technique is highly customizable, portrait and fashion photographers use it all the time, but it works just as amazing on objects as it does on human skin. If you don't know how to set it up, you can easily find a Photoshop action to automate the process and find plenty of how-to videos online.

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• Beytan Erkmen Freelance Photographer and Technical Tutor in Photography

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  When using frequency separation, unless you use it often, it is easily forgotten so I suggest to write an action so speed up the process. Actions also give you an opportunity to try different options (e.g. 8 bit vs 16 bit , different strengths of filters on the colour layer, etc) . My preference is to keep the freq. sep. layers in groups so you can blend the group with the original image and mask in/out the areas that work and areas that are too heavily artworked.

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• Zachary Kinovsky City Carrier at United States Postal Service

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  As someone who retouches a lot of textured backgrounds and clothing with wrinkles, frequency separation is really the ultimate tool to address them without the involvement of Photoshop's newer AI features. Being able to separate texture and color allows you to make realistic edits without sacrificing the integrity of the object you're working on, and it works best when you use clone stamp on the current layer, or the patch tool. Another way you can save yourself time is creating an action that will apply the separation to the layer you want to work on, as setting it up manually can be cumbersome. There are usually free actions you can download and set up on your machine and even create a function shortcut to quickly apply it.

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• Aleksandar Cucukovic Teacher at Alex On Design, UI Designer at Web Donut, YouTuber and tech geek.

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  For best results, make sure to select an area close to the area you want to fill, otherwise it will give you mixed results.Best used for extending your image, filling in blank areas or some areas you want to keep unified.Awesome tool for getting rid of reflections in the water, windows or on a car paint for example.

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• Jonathan Padilla Creative Services - Making Stuff Look Good

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  I’ve been leaning more toward using content aware fill. You get an added level of control by adding the edits to a new layer, it’s great for smoothing minor imperfections in, say, a brushed stainless steel.

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• Beytan Erkmen Freelance Photographer and Technical Tutor in Photography

  (edited)

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  content aware fill needs to be explored fully as it's a machine learning AI tool and very powerful but best not to rely too heavily on it as you won't want to forget how to edit manually as well.

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  Content-Aware Fill is fast and helpful. Be sure to carefully select the part of your image that is close to the part you are correcting. If this is too difficult the clone stamp is a good solution.

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• Faith Barker Your Multifamily Marketer | Marketing @ Trilogy | DEI Advocate | Experiential Brand Expert

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  I've started using Photoshop Beta for its AI-based edits and abilities. What I really enjoy about it is that it gives you three different variations on how the prompt can be interpreted. This allows you to choose what looks most natural and seamless for each application.

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• Eric Wagner

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  One interesting way I stumbled into is to use img2mg in Stable Diffusion a1111 with ControlNet and a prompt that removes blemishes.

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• Hammad Iqbal Photographer | Designer | AI Enthusiast

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  Often, a photograph doesn't match the correct proportions needed for a design. You might need to expand the canvas size to align with your design's proportions and then fill the resulting empty space. This is a scenario where generative fill (in Photoshop beta) truly works wonders. The tool analyzes the original image and populates the vacant area by naturally extending the image, almost as if it were captured with a wider-angle lens or from a greater distance.

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• Emily-May Olson Jack Of All Trades, Master of Some

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  The plug in Portraiture has streamlined my editing process so much. I am using an older version in Photoshop and also use the content aware tool for a flawless product. What I love most about it is being able to create a more cohesive product at a faster rate than hand editing every image.

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  No one, and I mean no one, has perfect skin. I've had the privilege of working with models and non-models; even the most seasoned professionals have their share of blemishes and imperfections. It's a testament to the fact that everyone is human, and while our imperfections make us unique, there's no harm in a little digital touch-up to present the best version of ourselves, especially in professional settings.

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  Let's not forget about makeup artists and how much they bring to the table. Even models or people who are "good at doing their own makeup" can benefit from a talented professional makeup artist. There's a reason hair and makeup is part of the movie-making process. The fact that actors and actresses who are known for "looking good" still go through hair and makeup before filming says a lot about what professional hair and makeup artists can do.

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• Mat Newcomb Long term experience in interactive media design and development, photography, graphics, animation, video and web.

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  All these tools are great, but using them in isolation will only take you so far, for instance you may want to use the clone tool to make a small gap of cloned pixels before you use the patch tool to avoid blurry edges or use the clone or spot healing brush on the 'high' of the frequency separation to remove blemishes in the detail. The point being that to get the best out of these tools is worth knowing how each of them work and how you can best make them effective for any given image.

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• Christopher Burris Experienced Graphic Design Artist

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  This is a last resort scenario for someone moving quickly. If the blemish is on a larger portion of skin such as a cheek, forehead, or even a nose, you can use the standard brush on low opacity, eyedrop the colors around the blemish, and fade it out that way. Just make sure to create a separate layer for the brush so you don't permanently alter the photo itself.

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  Frequency separation is the magical way, it keeps the skin texture plus the colors.You may need some color corrections according to each individual photo.BUT!It would be more professional and accurate to use the X-ray way to find each little blemish and use the spot healing brush with the pach tool.

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