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I did a deep dive on how Content-Aware Remove works, and when I enable the option Use Smart Previews Instead Of Originals For Image Editing, I observe that LR exports use the full-resolution image for Content-Aware Remove rather than the smart preview.
I think what you observed may be a curious property of Content-Aware Remove: Each time you apply it to the exact same spot, it uses a different replacement, resulting from randomness in its algorithm.
I tested this on LR 12.4 / Mac OS 13.4.
Exported Content-Aware Remove Uses the Full Resolution Raw
For my tests, I used this high-resolution 11648 x 8736 raw from a Fuji GX100S:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rjbw8t56z9xyra7/DSCF0056.2023.06.23.RAF?dl=0
Using such a high-resolution image will accentuate any differences with smart previews, which are 2560 pixels wide.
To ensure I was clicking in the same exact spot with the Healing tool each time, I used Mac Automator to record a script with my mouse clicks.
First, here's a closeup of where I'm clicking with the Content-Aware Remove tool, on a copy of the photo with no smart preview:
I'm applying the tool to the lower-right duck:
Here's what Develop looks like when I apply Content-Aware Remove to the exact same spot on a copy of the photo with a smart preview:
Note that Develop is showing the low-resolution smart preview.
But when I export the photo without the smart preview and the one with, the exported versions are both using the full-resolution raw to compute the Content-Aware Remove:
They're not identical because of the randomness in the algorithm, but they're both clearly using the full-resolution raw for the export.
For comparison, I applied Content-Aware Remove to the same spot on a 2560-wide TIFF created from the original raw and exported that:
If export were using smart previews for Content-Aware Remove, we'd expect that it would look that (but it doesn't).
This demonstrates that, in my test, export is using the original raw for the Content-Aware Remove tool, not the smart preview.
The Randomness in Content-Aware Remove
Each time you apply Content-Aware Remove to the same exact spot in a photo, there's a different result. Using the same raw from above, with no smart previews, here are four consecutive applications of the tool to the same spot in the lower-right corner:
Each replacement is a little different. Each time you invoke the Refresh command, you also get a different result.
This randomness makes it harder to compare the results of using smart previews with not using them, since you'll get different results each time you apply the tool.
Photo Merge > Panorama also uses randomness when choosing the boundary between two adjacent photos. And each time you merge the same photos, it uses a somewhat different boundary.
To be clear, I'm not using only Smart Previews to edit. The setting "Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing," only speeds the process of moving through a bunch of images quickly. LR is supposed to use the original high resolution files for exporting, but the new version isn't. It's using the smart preview for the tool, rather than accessing the data from the original raw file.
By @kbarre
Have you tried deleting the smart preview and then using the tool again to verify that this is indeed caused by sampling the smart preview? The content aware remove tool often gives disappointing and blurred results, but I am not sure if that only occurs if smart previews are present or if the tool is just not as good as we would like it to be.
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"I can find no way of selecting all healing spots and refreshing them in bulk."
There is no way, unfortunately. The best you could do is to use the Any Filter plugin to find all photos containing a Content-Aware Remove healing:
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