Repairing Your Image

You can use the Repair Tool to remove flaws, such as:

• Skin blemishes
• Telephone wires and other unwanted objects
• Flash flares from snowflakes or windows
• Lens scratches and water drops
• Shadows cast on the sensor by dust

There are two options available for the Repair Tool: the Healing Brush and the Cloning Brush.

When you select the Healing Brush, it copies pixels from one area of a photo to another, but it analyzes the pixels in the source area before copying them. It also analyzes the pixels in the target area, and then blends the pixels of both source and target, to match the surrounding area. This ensures that the lighting and color of the replacement pixels integrate with the surrounding area. The Healing Brush works particularly well with photos that involve complicated textures like skin or fur.

When you select the Cloning Brush, the tool copies the exact pixels from one area of a photo to another, creating an identical image area. The Cloning Brush is more effective for photos that have strong, simple textures or uniform colors, as it is more difficult to identify the copied pixels in the finished photo.

You can save your settings as a preset for future use.

Recommended workflow: To achieve the best results, perform any geometric operations on your image before using the Healing Brush.

To Remove Flaws from a Photo:

1. In Develop mode, on the Repair tab, in the Repair group, select one of the following:
   
• Heal: Copies the pixels from the source area to the target area, and blends pixels into the surrounding image area.
  
• Clone: Copies the pixels from the source area to the target area.
2. Drag the Nib Width and Feathering sliders as described in the table below.
3. Right-click the image to set a source location. Pixels will be copied from this location and used in the target location.
   
4. Click and drag over the area that you want to cover. If you selected the healing brush, ACDSee Pro analyzes and replaces the pixels when you release the mouse button.
5. Do one of the following:
   • Click Done to apply your changes and close the tool.
   • Click Cancel to discard all changes and close the tool.

Scroll with your mouse to adjust the brush size on the fly, or press the SHIFT key while you scroll to adjust feathering.

For the most accurate preview, zoom your image to 100% while healing or cloning.

Red Eye Reduction and selective adjustments, such as the Develop Brush and gradients, are the only adjustments that cannot be healed or cloned.

Repair Tool Options

You can right-click a slider to reset to the default value.