The Clone Stamp Tool is the original clean-up tool and although still useful and necessary, the Spot Healing Brush Tool offers many improvements.

It offers a means of cleaning up marks while merging the new pixels into the surrounding area. The repair can be blended in more successfully than with the standard Clone Stamp.

The Spot Healing Brush will make its own sample from the pixels around the mark and match in the texture, tone and lighting.

1. Open an image which has some unwanted dirty marks.

2. From the toolbox, choose the Spot Healing Brush Tool.

3. In the options bar, click on the Brush icon to open its dialogue box.

4. The relevant adjusters here are Diameter and Hardness.

Leave Spacing at 25%.

5. Set Hardness at 100% for best results.

6. The Diameter of the brush should be sufficient to cover the unwanted mark and still allow space around the blemish.

7. For Mode, choose Replace to retain the grain, noise and texture of the original.

Proximity Match will use the pixels around the edge of the brush shape to make the repair.

Usually Proximity Match works, but if it does not, undo with Edit > Undo Spot Healing Brush and try again with Create Texture checked.

This will use all the pixels within the area to make the fix.

8. Using a brush diameter sufficient to cover the mark, position the cursor over the small blemish and click. The brush creates its own repair and merges the edge in with the surrounding area.

Sometimes a second or third dab with the brush is necessary to get a good repair.

9. The brush can be dragged over slightly larger marks and scratches.

10. The Spot Healing Brush will certainly not work on everything.
Where there is fine detail, for example, the standard Healing Brush can be better; a specific sample can then be chosen for the repair.
If that still is not successful, use the Clone Stamp Tool.

11. To deal with larger areas or to have more control, use the Patch Tool.

Tips

• Set Hardness to 100% for best results.
  
  
• Keep brush size to the minimum to cover the blemish.
  
  
• Very near the picture edge or very close to a different part of the image, the Spot Healing Brush will not always give a clean result.
  The standard Clone Stamp can be better here.
  
  
• Don't drag the brush over long areas or the result can look like a smudge.