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dukeeastwood
Known Participant
October 12, 2018
Answered

Spot healing brush tool no longer works correctly

  • October 12, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 62622 views

for about a week now anytime I try the spot healing brush tool it no longer works like it used to... no matter what I try (changing the hardness, changing the layer I'm sampling from, changing the size of the brush) nothing helps now that the tool isn't working. What I'm seeing is ring around every retouch that is obvious and not seamless like the tool used to do. Imagine one retouch that looks wrong now being in place of every single retouch you try, even ones that used to be , and should be, seamless... but no... you get a big, ugly,  discolored line around the outside of the brush click....

nothing like being on a time crunch and then finding that the Adobe product you depend on just isn't working properly anymore.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer thomasl16731772

    None of the above advice helped me, but after I closed and reopened the file the Spot Healing Brush started working.

    4 replies

    angie_taylor
    Legend
    October 13, 2018

    This happens because the default setting for Spot healing is Content Aware - which generally works better. However older versions of PS used Proximity Match as a default (I think, off the top of my head!) so try switching to that or Create Texture, to see if you can replicate the old behaviour.

    thomasl16731772
    thomasl16731772Correct answer
    Participant
    October 11, 2019

    None of the above advice helped me, but after I closed and reopened the file the Spot Healing Brush started working.

    angie_taylor
    Legend
    November 5, 2019

    Well that should really be our default answer for everything! 😉 nine times out of ten it fixes the issue. Thanks for letting us know 🙂

    gener7
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 13, 2018

    Sometimes tool settings get changed around and yet there is a way back to defaults.

    Right click on the tool and select "Reset Tool"  I try this before trying a preference reset because I have to restore some items a preference reset takes away. It does reset the brush as well, but if the brush settings were thrown off, it will fix that as well. Tools and Dialog boxes have their own resets and should be the first thing to try.

    And you should see this:

    savagequest
    Inspiring
    April 28, 2022

    Tried this, all settings match the screenshots above and the tool just paints black on the canvas it never manipulated the image or object no matter what layer you have selected. 

    Mohammad.Harb
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 12, 2018

    In the Option bar,  is the Mode set to Normal and the type  Content-aware ?

    Stargem116
    Participant
    December 15, 2021

    Thanks, this guided me to the solution. I just had to make sure my tool was "sampling all layers." 

    Sahil.Chawla
    Adobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    October 12, 2018

    Hi Dukeeastwood,

     

    Sorry to hear about the spot healing tool not working properly, could you please let us know which exact version of Photoshop you're working on and which operating system are you using?

     

    Could you please try resetting the preferences of Photoshop and let us know if it helps with the issue?

    Preferences Reset Photoshop - Preferences

     

    Make sure that you backup customer presets, actions and brushes before restoring the preferences to default.

     

    Regards,
    Sahil

    Steelbar123
    Participant
    November 24, 2020

    I reset Preference Reset Photoshop by following the link and than used 

    Using the Preferences dialog

    That reset all my prefrences but it worked

    Thanks

    Bruce