Tidy up portraits

In our third instalment of Lightroom Classic CC tutorials Louise Carey shows you how to use the Spot Removal tool to polish skin to perfection

- Louise Carey

THE MISSION

Edit your portraits to perfection and retouch skin like a true portrait pro

Time needed 10 minutes

Skill level Beginner

Kit needed Adobe Lightroom

Classic CC

There’s plenty of great opportunities to catch beautiful portraits this summer, but if you want to enhance your images, one of the best skills you can learn is how to retouch the skin. Luckily, there’s a method I’m going to show you in Lightroom that is fast, effective, and surprisingly simple.

The Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic CC is an easy way to edit out flaws. Whether your model happened to have a bad breakout on your shoot, or you just want to remove some flyaway hairs, the Spot Removal tool can be a lifesaver when an otherwise amazing portrait has some small imperfections.

The Spot Removal tool is equally as handy for removing dust sensor spots from landscapes, too.

The Spot Removal tool replaces any area that you brush over with a different part of the picture that’s been automatically selected by the software, though you can reposition this area if it doesn’t look quite right. Lightroom offers two main options: ‘Clone’ and ‘Heal’, which helps you control the type of selection made. You can also further refine it by adjusting the size, feathering and opacity.

In this tutorial, I’ll run through how you can enhance any portrait by removing small flaws and imperfections with relative ease.