Using the Touch Up Tool to Remove Scratches

To remove scratches and blemishes from a photo, select the Touch Up Tool on the Wizard Panel. You can choose from two options: Auto Fix and Touch Up Brush.

Auto-Fix: If you have small dust spots and scratches throughout your image, try the Auto-Fix button.  This will slightly blur high-contrast areas to remove small flaws

You can click this button several times in a row to increasingly blend the flaws, but be careful not to make your whole image too blurry.

Dusty image before Auto-Fix

 After Auto-Fix

The Touch Up Brush: The Touch Up Brush allows you to paint over flaws in your image by using a selected flawless area as the “paint.” 

First, select a clean area of your image to use as the paint pattern. Click once on the Current Pattern preview box to enter the selection mode, and then trace a rectangle around the area of your image you would like to use as your paint pattern. In most cases it's best to use a small selection similar in shade and color to the problem area.

Selecting a paint pattern with the Touch Up Brush

Next, choose a brush size, and then paint over the scratch or blemish by clicking and dragging with your mouse. Continue to choose small, clean portions of the image and paint over the flaw. It might help to zoom in on the area.

Image – Before Touch Up                Image – After Touch Up

The Touch Up Brush can also be used to completely remove objects (or people) from a photo.  Just select small “paint pattern” areas from your background, such as the grass, blue sky, or water in the photo below, and then paint over the undesired object.

Image – Before Touch Up                 Image – After Touch Up