Today’s Question: After cloning some twigs and branches with Lightroom Classic doing a so-so job, I decided to just take the image into Photoshop to use their tools instead. When I do that, I like to remove all the Lightroom Classic spot removals and start fresh in Photoshop. Is there a way to delete ALL spot removal “spots” (for lack of a better word) rather than having to do them one by one?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can remove all the image cleanup work from an image in Lightroom Classic by clicking the Reset button at the bottom of the controls for the Healing tool.
More Detail: When you clean up a blemish with the Healing tool in Lightroom Classic, a marquee will be added to the image indicating the area you selected for cleanup. You can remove individual cleanup areas by holding the Alt key on Windows or the Option key on Macintosh while clicking on the cleanup spot within the image.
You can also remove all cleanup areas created with the Healing tool by clicking on the Reset button. With the Healing tool active you’ll see a panel above the Basic section of adjustments, which will include the controls for the Healing tool. At the bottom-right of that panel is the Reset button. Simply click that button and all cleanup areas will be removed from the image.
In general, by the way, if you decide that Lightroom Classic isn’t doing a great job of cleaning up the blemishes in an image, I do recommend resetting the Healing tool before sending the image to Photoshop. That will ensure there aren’t any problematic artifacts in the image that may have been created by the Healing tool. You can then start over with the cleanup work in Photoshop, using the superior and more flexible tools there to clean the blemishes from the image.
