Lightroom Mobile: Testing the New Blemish Removal Tool

The Blemish Removal Tool Does the Tedious Half of Retouching

Clearing spots off a portrait has always been the least interesting part of retouching — twenty minutes of clicking at a healing brush before you get to any of the decisions that actually matter. It was also work that needed a desktop, which meant nothing usable came out of a shoot until you were back at one.

Lightroom Mobile’s Blemishes tool clears the lot in a single tap, then gives you two sliders to decide how far it went. That’s the useful part: it isn’t an all-or-nothing filter, it’s an automated first pass you can dial back.

Why the Sliders Matter More Than the Tap

Fully Cleared Skin Looks Wrong

Real faces have texture. An automatic tool set to maximum removes every mark including the ones that made the person look like themselves, and the result reads as plastic.

Amount Controls How Much It Removes

Slide left and natural detail comes back; slide right and the clearing is more complete. Somewhere short of the top is almost always where you want to be.

Fade Blends Marks Back In

Separate from Amount, and more subtle — it eases marks back rather than reinstating them fully. Use it when the automatic pass was close but slightly too keen.

Open Quick Actions

1. Open Your Portrait in Lightroom Mobile

   Any portrait. The AI features are looking for a face, so this workflow is specific to people.

2. Tap the Quick Actions Wand

   Bottom left, the magic-wand icon. Because the app recognises there’s a person in the frame, it surfaces the Retouch category automatically rather than making you find it.

3. Zoom In With Two Fingers First

   Pinch to zoom onto the skin before you do anything. On a phone screen at fit-to-view you cannot see what the tool is about to change, and you certainly can’t judge whether it went too far.

Run the Automatic Pass

4. Select Blemishes From the Retouch Menu

   One tap. Lightroom analyses the whole face and removes spots and imperfections at once — the part that used to take twenty minutes.

5. Pull the Amount Slider Back

   Start at whatever the default gave you, then bring it left until skin texture returns. Watch the areas beside the nose and across the forehead, where over-clearing shows first.

6. Use Fade for the Final Adjustment

   If a few removals look too clean but the overall level is right, Fade blends those marks partly back rather than restoring them entirely. It’s the finer of the two controls.

Clean Up What It Missed

The automatic pass is good but not exhaustive. Anything left over is handled without leaving the workflow.

7. Tap the Remove Eraser Icon

   Bottom right. This is manual, but still AI-driven — it’s the generative removal tool rather than a clone stamp.

8. Paint Over Anything Remaining

   Stray hairs, a mark on clothing, something in the background. The app generates replacement content to fill the gap rather than copying from elsewhere in the image.

9. Tap the Checkbox to Commit

   This confirms the manual removals and returns you to the main edit.

Check Before You Save

10. Press and Hold to See the Before

    Anywhere on the image. Holding shows the original and releasing returns to your edit — the quickest honesty check there is, and the one most likely to tell you the Amount slider is still too high.

11. On a Tablet With a Keyboard, Use the Shortcuts

    The backslash key toggles the original view, and Q jumps straight into the healing tools. Worth learning if you edit on an iPad with a keyboard attached.

12. Tap the Final Checkmark

    Saves the edit. Lightroom’s edits stay non-destructive, so you can reopen and change the Amount later if you decide it went too far.

What to Watch Out For

Leaving Amount at Maximum

The single most common mistake, and the one that makes AI retouching identifiable at a glance. Skin needs texture.

Judging From the Zoomed-Out View

Everything looks fine on a phone at full-frame. Zoom in before deciding, and zoom in again before saving.

Removing Permanent Features

Freckles, moles and scars are part of how somebody looks. An automatic tool doesn’t know the difference between a spot that will be gone next week and a birthmark — you do.

Treating It as the Whole Retouch

This handles blemishes. Tone, color and contrast are still yours to do, and a cleanly retouched face over an unedited photo looks stranger than either.

The Decision the Tool Can’t Make

Automating blemish removal removes the labour but not the judgement. How much of a face to clean is a question about the person, the purpose of the photograph, and what they’d want — and no slider default knows any of that.

Which is why the Amount and Fade controls are the real feature here. A tool that only cleared everything would be faster and worse. The version that does the tedious work and then hands the decision back is the one worth using.

Try It on Your Next Shoot

Open the portrait in Lightroom Mobile, tap the Quick Actions wand, pinch to zoom in, choose Blemishes, pull Amount back until texture returns, use Fade for the last bit, then the Remove eraser for anything left, and press-and-hold to check before you save. Download the free sample image and PSD and follow the exact edit — then try it on a portrait straight off a shoot, which is exactly the situation this tool exists for. To go further with retouching on the desktop, our PRO Photoshop Learning Path is where to go next.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Open the toolLightroom mobile > Quick Actions (bottom left) > Retouch; it appears when the app finds a person
• Remove the blemishesTap Blemishes; they clear at once
• Keep it naturalThe Amount slider fades the blemishes back in; find the point that still looks like skin, then the checkmark
• Anything it missedRemove icon (bottom right), paint over the spot, checkmark
• Before and afterPress and hold on the image

Recorded on Lightroom mobile; the tool was exclusive to the mobile app at the time.