Spot Correct

Spot Correct is a brush for small fixes, like sensor dust, a stray hair or a speck of pollen. It also handles a tiny blown highlight from flash, or a small halo left by sharpening. For bigger jobs, like a whole leaf or a distracting branch, save a TIFF and use an editor like Photoshop.

To open it, click Spot Correct in the Editor header, or press Q (Lightroom’s Spot Removal key). Pressing Q again doesn’t apply your work. Use Apply, or Esc to cancel. If you’ve made changes, Macro Studio asks whether to apply or discard them.

Renamed: this tool was called Retouch before. The name Retouch now belongs to the tool that paints from your original photos. See Retouch.

Fixing spots

Set the Brush size to match the spot.
Click the spot, or drag across it if it’s longer than the brush.
If a spot comes out badly, switch to Clone and paint it by hand.
Click Apply to keep your work, or Cancel to drop it.

Apply adds each stroke as a step in the image’s edit history. So you can still undo it with ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z after you leave the editor.

Heal and Clone

Spot Correct has two modes. The difference is who picks the area to copy from.

Mode	Source	How you use it
Heal (default)	Macro Studio picks it	Click a spot, or drag across a larger one
Clone	You pick it	⌥-click / Alt-click to set the source, then drag to paint

Heal handles most spots. Use Clone when Heal picks a poor source, or to carry a hair or an edge straight through a speck. Press ⇧Q / Shift+Q to switch modes.

Heal

Click a speck and it’s fixed straight away. Drag across a hair or a scratch and the brush paints a blue mask. The whole area is fixed when you let go.

Heal copies real texture from a matching patch nearby and blends it in. It works well on hair, scales, gills, bokeh and smooth backgrounds.

If nothing nearby matches, such as right at the image edge, Heal can’t add texture. On a detailed area, that can leave a soft patch. If a repair looks smudged, undo and try a slightly different spot or a smaller stroke.

Clone

Clone copies the pixels exactly, without matching the brightness. So pick a source that already matches the spot.

⌥-click / Alt-click to set the source. A crosshair marks it.
Drag over the spot. A dashed circle shows where the brush is copying from.

The distance between the source and the brush stays the same, for this stroke and later ones. ⌥-click somewhere new to pick a new source. Until you set one, Clone won’t paint.

In Clone mode a left-drag paints, so it doesn’t pan. Pan with right-drag, middle-drag, ⌘-drag / Ctrl-drag, or your hold-to-pan key. If your pan key is ⌥ / Alt, ⌥-click sets the source and ⌥-drag pans.

Feather and Strength

Feather appears in Clone mode only. It adds a soft band outside the brush circle, shown as a dashed circle. At 0% the edge is hard. At 100% the dab reaches twice as far and fades out. Use a soft edge on a smooth background, and a hard edge for a one-pixel fix.

Strength works in both modes. At 100% a stroke covers the spot completely. Lower values let the original show through, which helps when a repair looks pasted on. Going back and forth within one stroke doesn’t build past the setting. Let go and paint again to build it up.

Your adjustments while you work

The canvas shows the image with your Adjustments applied, so you judge each spot against the picture you’ll save. Spots are still removed from the pixels underneath, so your masks, sliders and crop stay editable. Untick Adjustments, or press A, to work on the plain pixels. Retouch and Defringe each have their own setting.

On a camera-raw stack, an amber bar may say your repairs can no longer reach the Raw DNG. Your spots are still safe in your TIFF, JPEG and Macro Studio DNG. See Retouch: How it’s saved.

Control	What it does
Heal / Clone	Who picks the source: Macro Studio (Heal) or you (Clone).
Brush	Brush radius, 1-200 image pixels. It doesn’t change when you zoom. A little larger than the spot is fine. Much larger affects clean pixels around it.
Feather (Clone only)	Soft band outside the brush, 0-100%.
Strength	How much a stroke replaces, in both modes.
Adjustments (A)	Shows the canvas with your Adjustments applied. On by default.
Undo / Redo	Undo or redo the last stroke.
Reset	Clear all strokes and go back to the original image.
Cancel	Close the editor and drop all strokes.
Apply	Put the strokes into the result.

Macro Studio remembers Brush, Feather, Strength and Adjustments between sessions.

Keys and mouse

A row below the image lists these controls while you work.

Action	Control
Fix a spot (Heal)	Click
Fix an area (Heal)	Drag. It’s fixed when you let go.
Set the clone source (Clone)	⌥-click / Alt-click
Paint (Clone)	Drag
Pan	Right-drag, middle-drag, ⌘-drag / Ctrl-drag, or drag with the hold-to-pan key (Spacebar by default)
Zoom	Scroll
Fit, and back to your zoom	Z or Space
Brush size	`[` / `]`, or `⌘` / `Ctrl` + scroll
Feather (Clone)	`{` / `}`, or `⌘⇧` / `Ctrl+Shift` + scroll
Strength	`,` / `.`, or `⌥⌘` / `Alt+Ctrl` + scroll. Type `0`-`9` for steps of 10% (`0` is 100%), or two digits quickly for an exact value.

The editor opens at the zoom you were using in the Editor. Double-click does nothing here. To check the whole picture, press Z or tap Space to go to fit, and press it again to go back to the same spot at the same zoom. You can zoom in to 800%. Click the zoom readout in the bottom-left corner to pick a percentage.

You can change the pan key in Preferences, and what a scroll does in Wheel gestures, per screen.

Tips

Zoom in to at least 100% before you fix small spots. At fit zoom the brush is too big.
One spot per stroke. Small strokes are easier to undo, and give Heal a better chance of finding a match.
For the smallest Clone fix, use Brush 1 with Feather 0. That changes exactly one pixel.
Try a Strength around 60-80% when a repair looks pasted on.
Don’t over-correct. Fix the specks that pull the eye away from your subject.