Healin’ groovy What’s the quickest and most effective way to get rid of blemishes and sensor dirt in Photoshop?

Without a doubt, the best way to clean up little specks such as sensor dirt, skin blemishes on a face or something like spots of pollen on the petals of a flower is to use the Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop.

The difference between the Spot Healing Brush tool and the standard Healing Brush tool is that the Spot tool makes the decision on where it will sample from in the image, to hopefully give you a seamless repair; whereas with the standard tool, you have to click on the area you want it to sample from. It works well too.

The thing to remember with the Spot Healing Brush is that it isn’t the right tool for cleaning up large areas, but if you need to retouch small blemishes, particularly on evenly toned areas, it will do a brilliant job. The fact that it is doing most of the work for you, other than selecting the specific area you are healing, means that this is a rapid-fire solution to get a better image.

I use it on the occasions a bit of sensor dirt has messed up an image – these things often show up on light subjects or are particularly annoying in blue skies. While the long-term solution here is to clean your camera’s sensor, the Spot Healing Brush will at least provide an answer if sensor dirt crops up unexpectedly.

I’ll also use it on things where I wasn’t able to remove the blemish in the first place. Obvious subjects, as already mentioned, are spots on a face or as you can see in my sample shot, tiny spots of pollen and dirt on the petals of a flower. A couple of minutes carefully working over the image with the Spot Healing Brush and the petals are looking perfect again.