Lightroom 5, Spot Removal Tool (Not a Healing Brush!)

One of the tools I do use regularly got a makeover in LightRoom 5 and is one of the bits that there has been a fair amount of noise about.  The spot removal tool was great for, well, spots. You could also creatively use it in other ways, but to be honest it was a bit limited as it only worked by placing a circle over the thing you wanted to remove, so if you wanted to remove something that was long and thin, you'd have to put a big circle over it and then have LR work its magic, which did not often give great results.

In LR 5 you can now "paint over" the long and thin (or really any irregular shaped) things you wish to remove and Lightroom will do much better.  I've heard this feature described as being akin to CS6's healing features but sadly it really isn't, it IS much better and will mean in some cases you won't need to go to CS6, but its not the same and its not as good (in my opinion).

Original image and blemish removal comparison in CS6 and Lightroom 5.

Take this image for example, top left is the original, and there's a nasty branch covering the bird on the left.

Top right, shows the branch "painted" in with the CS6 Healing brush, and the image below it shows the result.  Pretty good.

Bottom left shows the new Spot Removal Tools' attempt at the same thing.  Because it samples from a nearby location it has carried across bits of the branch and the birds leg, which means more cleaning up.

So its a great addition to Lightroom and improves the tool a lot, but a Healing brush it isn't.

Peter.