Getting Better Results From Lightroom’s Spot Removal Tool
I’ve shared this tip before, but I had a guy ask me about this problem at my seminar this week in Philly, so I thought it was worth sharing again.
If you’re using the Spot Removal tool to remove a spot or a blemish and the results look kind of funky, it’s probably because the tool didn’t pick a similar enough area (text, tone and/or content wise) to give you a good fix. Take a look at the image below.
Above: The upper circle (the one with the white arrow pointing at it) is where the part I wanted to remove is located, but look at the lower circle where it sampled from. A fairly lame choice, and of course the fix doesn’t look realistic. Of course, I can grab the top circle and try to find a better location for the tool to sample from, but that’s where this tip comes in handy — you can have Lightroom do it for you:
Just press the ‘/’ (the slash key) on your keyboard, and Lightroom will instantly pick a different spot to sample from (see below).
Above: When I pressed the / key, it picked an entirely different spot. It was better, but it wasn’t great, so I just hit that same / (slash) key again.
Above: the third time’s a charm! A much better location and my retouch looks a lot better.
Hope you find that helpful next time you’re removing spots, specs, or retouching (removing wrinkles, blemishes, etc.).
Have a great weekend everybody (I’m not shooting any games this week – the Bucs are on the road, so I’ll just be watching at home).
Best,
-Scott
Great tip, I will be using this from now on. I was just at Imaging USA in Atlanta and went by the Kelby One booth which was awesome.
Missed this first time around, thanks for sharing — Wonderful tip, Scott, huge time-saver, thank you!
PS: Loved every minute of your Philly SLAP seminar (16 Nov), come back soon!
Great tips. We use also Lightroom in our editing. Thank you for sharing your tutorial.
When I use the Clone option I sometimes get a piece I did not select (e.g. part of an eyebrow). Why? How to avoid?
Seems like it would be a lot easier to simply move the source spot to a new location that does match the problem area.
It might seem like that…it’s just not. Why not try it and you’ll see.
I have tried it. That is how I often use this tool.
I’m using LR 6.1.1 and I don’t seem to have the white line going to a second circle to choose the area I want cloned. Is that only in Creative Cloud? I would love to be able to pick the area to be cloned.
thanks!
When you select the circle on the menu – look below your photo’s lower left corner.
There’s a field below and just outside of it that should say “Tool Overlay” – set it to “Always”. If that area isn’t displaying, turn on the Toolbar by pressing ‘t’.
Should fix you up I think.
Great tip, as ever. Really looking forward to your new show to eclipse all others 😉
What would be really fun, next time your organisation celebrates an anniversary (e.g. 15 years of Kelby Media), would be to get all your old team, e.g. Dave Cross, Matt K, to submit their own killer-tip… particularly if you challenge them to find one that has never been aired before…. a bit like the challenges Dave C gave us each week.
Keep it up, Scott
Hi Scott, love your tipps. But this one has been published previously on this blog:
http://lightroomktips.wpengine.com/quick-tip-getting-better-results-spot-removal-tool/
It’s awesome that you were able to point that out Bastian. Did you read the very first line of this post?? I’m guessing not…
Thanks for this tip Scott! I’ve been hoping for something like this to exist – and it does, even whith a keyboard shortcut. Great!
Oh BTW, any plans on restarting The Lightroom Show?