Discover How to Use the Clone, Heal, and Content Aware Remove Healing Modes in Lightroom Classic

Watch this video (or view the tips and shortcuts below) to discover how to use the Clone, Heal, and Content-Aware Remove healing modes in Lightroom Classic to quickly remove dust spots, imperfections and distracting elements in a photograph.

Tap the Q key to select the last used Healing tool.

There are three different healing modes:

• Clone — makes an exact copy of an area to patch the unwanted area.
• Heal — selects a source from within the image and adjusts color and tone to match the unwanted area. 
• Content-Aware Remove — intelligently creates new information to patch the unwanted area.   

“[“ or “]” increases/decreases the size of the brush size. Add shift to increases/decreases feather (Clone/Heal modes only).

A single click will create a circle spot and auto-find a source. Click -drag to create a brush spot. 

Command + Option -drag (Mac) | Control + Alt -drag  (Win) creates a circle spot that scales from the center.

Use the arrow keys to nudge the source point. Add the Shift key to nudge in greater increments.

To select new source for existing circle or brush spot:

• Click the Refresh button in the Healing panel.
• Tap the “/” (forward slash) key
• For the Heal and Clone modes, Command -drag (Mac) | Control -drag (Win) to create a circle spot and drag to manually define the source. 
• In the Content-Aware Remove mode, Command -drag (Mac) | Control -drag (Win) in the image area – after setting the source – to manually select the source area. Note: the Content-Aware Remove mode doesn’t display the source area like the other two modes. 

Command -click (Mac) | Control -click (Win) on one of the mode icons to deselect the active spot and select the new spot mode.

Decrease the Opacity of a retouched spot to minimize a distracting element (instead of removing it).

Holding down Shift (before starting to heal) constrains the brush stroke to horizontal or vertical lines.

• Click, then shift-click in a different area to connect the circle spots with a straight brush stroke (to remove power lines for example).

Option -click (Mac) | Alt -click (Win) a spot to delete it (the icon displays as a pair of scissors).

• Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) over multiple spots to batch-delete spots.

“A” toggles Visualize Spots. Use the Slider to control the high-contrast preview.

 “H” toggles the tool overlay. In Auto view, repositioning the cursor outside of the image preview area temporarily hides the tool overlay.

When zoomed, tap the home key to move to the upper left of the document. Tap the End key to go to the lower right. Page up/Page down navigates through an image (screen by screen) reducing the possibility of missing spots. Add the Shift key to move left/right. Note: on a laptop, press the function key (fn) plus the up/down arrows to move up or down through the image. Press the function key (fn) plus the left or right arrow to go Home or End. 

Once dust spots are removed from one image, you can click Copy, enable Healing, move to the next image, and choose Paste. Or, select “similar” images (“similar” because they all have the same dust) and use the Sync button to apply the Spot Removal settings to others (as the image content will most likely vary from one image to another, it maybe be necessary to check each image to make sure that the healing is seamless.

Right -click (or command -click Mac), on a spot to change the mode and access additional healing options. Note: the tool overlay must be displayed to view the context sensitive menu specific to healing.

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