Retouch photos and fix imperfections in Photoshop on the iPad

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With Photoshop now available on your iPad, you can select powerful tools such as Remove tool, Spot healing brush and Clone stamp tools to retouch and remove unwanted parts from your composites.

Introduced in Photoshop on the iPad 5.2 (October 2023 release)

Easily remove objects, people, or distractions from your image on the iPad by brushing over them using the Remove tool.

The Remove tool ( ) is found within the Clone tools. Use the Size field to choose a brush size slightly larger than the area you want to fix to cover the entire area with one stroke.

Just underneath the canvas, you’ll find the Remove after each stroke toggle button. When left on, the tool switches to the single-stroke mode. Turn it off to brush your selections with multiple strokes to be committed at once at the end. Use this option for large, complicated, or disconnected areas that are difficult to brush in one stroke.

Follow these steps to replace objects, areas, or distractions in your image using Remove tool in Photoshop on the iPad.

Introduced in Photoshop on the iPad 5.5 (March 2024 release)

You can now use the Remove tool in Photoshop on the iPad as either a brush or a lasso.

With this release, use the Remove tool to draw a loop around unwanted elements in your image to remove them. What’s amazing is that you don’t even need to close the loop, as Photoshop will do it for you!

Now, you can easily remove large areas without the hassle of brushing over the entire area.

Follow these steps to use the Remove tool to draw a loop around the element you want to remove from your image:

To correct accidental selections made while drawing a loop, change the brush stroke mode from + to -.

The Spot Healing Brush tool paints with a sampled part from your document and matches the texture, lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled part to the part of the document being healed.

This tool does not require you to specify a sample spot and automatically picks samples from around the part of the document to be retouched.

To work with the Spot Healing Brush, do the following:

1. Tap the Spot Healing Brush () icon from the toolbar.
2. From the tool options that open, you can set the brush size, and hardness.
3. Tap () to access more settings.
4. In the Spot Healing Brush settings panel that opens, enable Sample all layers to use all visible layers in your document as a source to apply healing on the selected layer. Deselect Sample All Layers, to sample only from the active layer. Also, you can enable/disable Use pressure for size as required.
5. Tap the area in your document you want to retouch, or tap and drag to smooth over imperfections in a larger area.

Clone stamp tool

The Clone stamp () tool paints one part of your document over another part of the same document. You can also paint one part of a layer over another layer.

This tool is useful for duplicating objects or removing a defect in your composite. 

To use the Clone stamp tool, you set a sampling source on the area you want to clone from and paint over another area. By default, your last sampling area is selected when you access this tool.

To work with the Clone stamp tool, do the following:

1. Double-tap the Spot Healing Brush () icon from the toolbar to reveal the hidden Clone stamp tool.
2. Tap  to select the Clone stamp tool.
3. From the tool options that open, you can change the brush radius, hardness, opacity, and set source.
4. Tap () to access more settings.
5. In the Clone stamp settings panel that opens, you can select your Sample—Current layer, Current and below, and All layers. You can also enable/disable the Use pressure for size and Use pressure for opacity options.

6. Activate the primary touch shortcut to Set source and tap over an area you want to select as the cloning source.

7. Release the touch shortcut after setting the source and tap over an area on which you want to apply Clone stamp. This action paints the source area over your selected area.