P: More Photoshop like clone/healing/content aware brushes

Will this feature request receive a 100 "likes" before the end of the year?

Because the products aren't even part of the same suite, and 90% of lightroom would use only 2 of PS. If you really need PS, you have CameraRaw as well. And if you have that, Lightroom becomes only an expensive cataloging tool. So they have to do it, because they will get more sales and a more loyal customer base, or move away to a product that listens more carefully.

The spot healing repair tool seems much slicker and usable in elements.....elements seems more brush like

Son, quick answer "Yes".

1. "Slow" is better than "unavailable".
2. It need not be really, really slow.

There are straightforward (slow) ways to implementing this feature and there are more programming intensive (much quicker) ways of implementing this feature.

I believe there is some untapped potential for optimising the performance of local adjustments. Even in the presence of an image pipeline with its fixed order of image operations, one can implement local adjustments efficiently by using caching techniques.

Extensive use of local adjustments will have an impact on preview generation, export, etc. performance, but if one is concerned with utmost performance one may should look to Bibble 5, not Lightroom. I prefer Lightroom's IQ and user interface and think these are worth sacrificing some speed.

Yeah, I think we need this tool in Lightroom - to work as fast as they can make it work...

Yes.

Spot healing isn't that slow if lens corrections aren't enabled.

As it is right now, if we're using spot healing tool, LR response would be really really slow. So here is my question, would you still take the new tool, if upon using it your PC will slow down significantly?

Scott, you might be right. I don't know. The competition is definitely growing.

I think that it is only a matter of time until software like Bibble 5 & Aperture that support more comprehensive local adjustment support will receive more company.

TK, you make strong points. I'm arguing rhetorically, not specifically against your points.

I simply feel that if Adobe tries to hold back LR so as to not step too much on PS's toes, it will hurt them in the long run. Their competitors have no such restrictions and stand to usurp the parametric and pixel market if they can get the best of both worlds into one product.

I do a lot of retouching and compositing so I'll be married to PS for a long time, but none the less, PS is a dying product for most photographers and probably a non-starter for most prosumers by now.

Scott, I couldn't agree more with your last statement.

Regarding your question: Some might argue that distraction removal does not need to be non-destructive.

Many image adjustments lend themselves to be re-tweaked at some point and hence should be non-destructive. Distractions, in contrast, are typically not brought back. One could therefore argue that it is fine to use destructive image editing in Photoshop for such cases and hence no ACR support is needed.

I'm not of that opinion, for instance, one may later discover that one needs to do a better job of removing distractions and thus revisit the editing. Also, as I wrote before, I think the current integration with Photoshop or other editors leaves a lot to be desired. But still, the view I provided could be the reason why we won't see distraction removal technology in ACR (and thus in Lightroom).