We still just click on a problem spot and let the Spot Healing Brush do the rest with no real ability on our part to control the results. In Photoshop CS5, the general idea hasn't changed. As long as the problem area was small enough and there was enough good image data close by, the Spot Healing Brush was usually able to give us acceptable results.īut when there wasn't enough good image data or the problem spot was too big and complex for it to decide on its own how to repair the area, it ran into problems and there was nothing we could do other than switch to a different tool like the standard Healing Brush, the Patch Tool or the Clone Stamp Tool, all of which require more time and effort. The way it has worked from CS2 until now is that you'd simply click on a small area of damaged or unwanted texture, then watch as Photoshop magically replaced it with randomly-selected good texture from somewhere close to the spot you clicked.

Ironically, the Spot Healing Brush's biggest strength, that it does almost everything on its own with little effort or input from us, has also been its biggest weakness. First introduced in Photoshop CS2, the Spot Healing Brush may not be the only image retouching tool you'll ever need, but its speed and performance make it perfect for cleaning up small problems before moving on to the larger, more time consuming ones. In a previous photo retouching tutorial, we looked at Photoshop's Spot Healing Brush and how we can use it to quickly remove or repair small problem areas in an image, like acne or other minor skin blemishes, dust, dirt, mold, or small cracks or scratches.

Spot healing brush photoshop