The spot removal tool in Lightroom has to be one of my favorite features. With Adobe adding this tool, I can now spend more time in Lightroom than in Photoshop, increasing my workflow and my productivity.

The spot removal tool looks like a big O with an arrow pointing to the right. It can be found in the Develop panel, in between the crop tool and the red eye tool. When clicked, you will see an option to Clone or Heal the spot. You can also adjust the size of the area and the opacity you want to use for the removal. Typically I use "Heal" and adjust the other sliders to match the spot. The really nice part of this tool is that Lightroom will try to fix the spot on its own by finding a matching area! However, if the fix is bad you can just drag and drop the matching area to find one that works. Simple, right? It really is!

Here is a great example of a one shot HDR photo that I've been working on. This shot was taken during the Mark Wallace PocketWizard Meetup in Jack Studios. All of the dirt and spots you see are the window, not on my sensor. I really love this photo because it is so industrial. It gives me the "Gotham City" vibe. However, the spots are really annoying!

Even the helicopter at the top of this image gets annoying when the photo is small enough where you can't tell what it is…

…or that really long smudge from the top

All of the circles you see in this screen shot are where I told Lightroom to make the removal.  In Lightroom, when you put your mouse over one of the circles you will see another one appear with an arrow pointing to the original. That is the area of pixels that Lightroom took to fix your spot. As I stated before, move that new circle around and you will see the original spot's area change.

Neat, isn't it?

Getting rid of all of the spots on the window in this photo took me about 15 minutes of Lightroom work. Yes, it could take the same amount of time in Photoshop if you are quick about, it but the key is staying in Lightroom to improve your workflow. While the photo isn't complete, here is what I have done in a matter or 15 minutes:

If you didn't know this tool existed please give it a try. If you knew it existed and never thought it was worth a shot, please give it a try. I'd love to see your before and after photos too, so please post a comment with a link to your photos. Thanks for reading and happy shooting!

Scott Wyden Kivowitz
http://scottwyden.com