There’s nothing wrong with a little vanity. After all, sometimes a perfectly good portrait is marred by small yet annoying stuff like a zit, makeup smudge, or a stray hairs. Or maybe you captured an object in the frame you wish you hadn’t, or you scanned the image and introduced dust specks, or perhaps your camera’s sensor is a little dirty. Happily, the Retouch tool in Photos for OS X can come to your rescue (it’s not available in Photos for iOS). As you’re about to learn, Photos’ Retouch tool is more powerful than the one in iPhoto. How to use the Retouch tool The Retouch tool works by copying pixels from one area of your photo to another and then blending them (blurring, really) into the pixels you click or drag atop.
To use it, select an image in Photos and then press Return to enter Edit mode, or press the Edit button in the upper-right of the toolbar. Use the Zoom slider at the upper-left to zoom into the image and, if necessary, drag while holding down the spacebar to reposition the image so you can see the thing you’re about to remove.
Activate the Retouch tool by clicking it or by pressing the R key on your keyboard. When you do, your cursor turns into a black circular outline rimmed with white, so you can always see the circle atop dark or light colors in your image. Adjust the brush cursor size so it’s slightly larger than the item you want to remove. Use the Size slider at right or your keyboard: tap [ (the left bracket key) to make the cursor smaller, or tap ] (the right bracket key) to make it bigger. Next, choose from one of the following two methods to send the offending item packin’. Copy pixels from just outside the cursor’s edge If you’ve got plenty of good, clean pixels around the thing you want to get rid of—say, flawless skin around a blemish or a cloudless sky around a sensor spot—then single click it. You briefly see a white overlay marking the area you clicked, and when you release your mouse button, Photos blends the copied pixels into the surrounding ones.
If you asked any Mac user what they use their computer for, editing photos would come near the top of the list.There are, of course, many tools you can use to edit photos on a Mac, including Apple's own Photos.
If the item fits easily inside your cursor, a single click is all it takes to zap it. To keep from picking up adjacent colors—like the lips or shadow beneath her nose, make your cursor only slightly larger than the item you want to remove. If the item has plenty of free pixels around it, but it doesn’t fit within a round brush cursor—think stray hairs, power lines, a scar, and so on—click and drag with the tool instead.
When you do, Photos shows your brushstroke as a white overlay. Release your mouse button, and Photos copies nearby pixels and blends them into the area you dragged over. By dragging with a really small brush, you can give your subject an eyebrow trim, as illustrated in this before (top) and after (bottom) image. (Click this image to enlarge.) Keep your eyes peeled for any smudging that occurs from the pixel blending Photos performs.
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If necessary, press Command-Z to undo the last brushstroke you made and have another go at it, perhaps with a smaller brush or by repositioning the item within the brush cursor or by clicking instead of dragging (or vice-versa). To undo all the changes you’ve made with the Retouch tool in the current editing session, click the Reset button at the lower-right. Here’s the before (left) and after (right) version after zapping blemishes and trimming both eyebrows. (Click to enlarge.) Copy pixels from elsewhere in the photo If you don’t have good pixels (or enough of them) around the item you want to remove, you can copy pixels from elsewhere in the image by setting a sample point (iPhoto can’t do this). This maneuver is handy for removing stuff that’s close to items you want to keep.