Heal: removing dust, spots and scratches

Open the Heal tool (press Q). It covers marks with pixels copied from nearby, and is ideal for dust on scanned negatives, sensor spots, skin blemishes and stray hairs.

1. Set the Size a little bigger than the mark ([ and ] change it).
2. Click or tap a spot to remove it, or drag along a hair, wire or scratch to paint over it.
3. The app picks a matching place to copy from, shown as a dashed outline with an arrow. If the result looks wrong, drag the dashed outline somewhere better, or click New Source.

Heal or Clone:

• Heal copies the texture and blends it into the colour and brightness around the spot. Use it for most marks.
• Clone copies pixels exactly. Use it for repeating patterns or hard edges, where Heal would smudge.

Other controls: Feather softens the edge of each spot; Opacity lets some of the original show through. With a spot selected, these change that spot.

Finding dust: tick Visualise Spots (press A). The photo turns black and white with specks lit up; raise Sensitivity to find fainter ones. Zoom to 100% to check.

Changing spots later: click a spot to select it. Drag it to move it, drag the knob on its edge to resize it, press Delete to remove it, or ⌥-click any spot to delete it. Show Outlines (beside the number of spots, or press H) shows or hides the circles round them; Clear All removes every spot.