TouchUpPhotoTouch up a photo

Fix marks

Remove spots from a photo

The spot fix is armed. Tap each mark once and drag the seam to check it.

A print of a mother and child with dust specks, two small blemishes and a stray hair on it; a brush passes over each one and it disappears.
Drop your photo hereChoose photoDrag it in, or paste a copied picture. JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC.

Nothing to hand?

FreeNo account neededEvery fix is made on this device.

Not sure where to start?Pick what is wrong and the right fix opens first

What is wrong with it?

Optional — the uploader works without it. It takes about five seconds and can save you a tap you would have undone.

What it will not doSix fixes per photo, and an honest no

What it refuses, and why

The solid circle is the patch one tap fills. The dashed ring is what the tool reads before it writes anything: if more than eight per cent of that ring still looks like the thing inside the patch, the thing carries on past the patch and one tap cannot finish it.

Too big for one tap. That needs a region, not a spot. Nothing was changed.

That message is the product, not a failure of it. Nothing is written, nothing is undone, and the photograph is exactly as it arrived. Six fixes at most, and a tool that reads the picture before it agrees.

Choose a photo

Where the specks come from

Three sources account for nearly all of them. Dust on the sensor, which lands in the same coordinates on every frame from that body until it is cleaned. A smear on the front of the glass, which is soft, wide and usually in one corner. Something on the subject side — a raindrop on a window, a crumb on a table, a hair on a scanner bed.

Sensor dust shows itself against a wide even field: a pale sky, a white wall, a sheet of paper. It is close to invisible against foliage, which is why it survives for months without anybody noticing.

Working through a frame

  1. Open the file. The spot fix is already armed on this page.
  2. Tap each mark once. A numbered tag lands where you tapped.
  3. Drag the seam across and look at the tags. What was there on the left should not be there on the right.
  4. If a tag is in the wrong place, click it and press Backspace, or use the Remove button on its row.
  5. Keep these fixes. The same records run again against the full-size pixels on the way out.

Six per photograph. If a frame genuinely has more than six marks on it, the sensor wants cleaning more than the file wants tapping.

A line rather than a speck — a hair, a scratch, a wire — is a Heal stroke: Remove a mark from a photo. A spot on skin: Photo blemish remover.

Questions about specks

How small is small enough?

If the mark fits inside a circle the width of your smallest fingernail on screen at full size, it is this tool's job. If you would have to trace round it, it is not.

There are marks in the same place on every photograph from one card.

That is dust on the sensor or on the rear of the lens, and it lands in the same coordinates every time. Open the whole card at once on Batch touch up, tap the specks on the first frame, and tick those spots for every frame: each one is checked again on each photo.

The mark sits on a brick wall and the fill made a mess.

It will. A disc filled from its surroundings reproduces the surroundings, and a repeating pattern with a hard grid does not survive being averaged. The seam shows you that before you save.

Can it find the specks for me?

It can propose them. Find specks looks for small dark or bright marks on smooth ground and draws a ring round each one it would accept a tap on. Nothing is applied: tap a ring and an ordinary spot is placed there, with every refusal still in force. Specks on busy ground — foliage, fabric — are not proposed, so look there yourself.

Photographic visual for Remove Spots
Remove Spots