For all intents and purposes, this is Adobe CS5’s prized Content-Aware tool, and I would argue that it is far more at home in Lightroom than in Photoshop. It will attempt, based on the results, to find an appropriate area to replace it with (which you can move, should you disagree) and then blend the replacement into the shot where you painted. Now, the Advanced Spot Heal brush allows you to “paint” an area of your image that you would like to fix, however large or irregular in shape. These types of tasks would always end up being handed off to Photoshop, which would then allow you the Content-Aware healing and fill modes for larger areas.Īn image before the advanced heal selection Spot healing a blemish on skin was always a quick and easy fix, but getting rid of an errant signpost or passer-by in your beautiful landscape didn’t go very well. Previous incarnations of the Spot Heal brush would allow you to fix one circular brush stroke at a time, which could amount to some tedium if it did work and some garish results if it didn’t.
It should be called the “Get this crap out of my shot!” brush, because that’s exactly what it does. The top feature addition in LR5 has got to be the Advanced Spot Healing brush, which is really misnamed. So, this will be a short review – if you are unfamiliar to the background behind LR, I recommend you check out my in-depth examination of Lightroom 3 from a photographer’s view, and my review of the features Lightroom 4 added. I’ve been using Lightroom since v1.0, and I’ll be honest – this is the first time I can say I felt that it was the nexus to my projects, instead of just my light-table to decide what would make it to final editing. However, this short list of new features is deceptive – many of these bring Lightroom into the forefront for the first time as a true image processing center, rather than a front-end for Photoshop. In fact, I’d dare say that most consumers will upgrade based mostly on one reason – the Advanced Healing brush. Lightroom 5 has a rather short list of improvements and additions, and nearly all of them help it to stand on its own as an image editor designed purely for enhancement of photography and videography instead of adding more bloat. We’ve taken it for a spin over the past month, and walked away suitably impressed… but what we were most impressed with was Adobe’s commitment to ironing out kinks to a winning formula, rather than redefining and redesigning a tool designed for workflow management. A long, long time ago, someone much smarter than I coined the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”Īdobe seems to have taken that message to heart with the latest retail release of its photo management software, Lightroom 5.