Move Spot Removal Points Together

Report · Jun 06, 2019

I'm curious to know if there is an easy way to select all spot removal points and move them? It doesn't have to be just the spot removal tool, it can apply to other tools, like the adjustment brush for example.

Report · Jun 06, 2019

Not to my knowledge.

Why would you want to do something like that? I can't think of a reason to do so.

Report · Jun 06, 2019

Great question! I tried copying spot removal points from one photo to the other and when it pasted they were at the wrong place. I just need to move them so that they can be in the right place, instead of moving each one individually. Does that make sense?

Report · Jun 06, 2019

paradeshi wrote
Great question! I tried copying spot removal points from one photo to the other and when it pasted they were at the wrong place. I just need to move them so that they can be in the right place, instead of moving each one individually. Does that make sense?

No, it does not, but perhaps you tried this the wrong way. You should not try to copy/paste spot removals, but copy/paste settings (and select only spot removal in the dialog). Or Synchronize the settings.

What then happens is as follows. The destination spot (the spot that will be removed) will be in the same place. The source spot (the spot where the pixels are taken from) is recalculated for the new image, and that is what does make sense. What is a good source spot in one image, is not necessarily a good source spot in another image.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Report · Jun 06, 2019

Totally understand! The issue in this situation is that I have three photos, Subject A, Subject B and Subject A+B. I have made the changes I need for both subjects A & B but the third photo that has both of the subjects in it together. So when I copied the settings and pasted them it pasted them in the wrong place. But like you said I may be looking at it the wrong way. May be Lightroom is not designed for something like that. Instead of moving the points I am forced to move the photo to match the points. The only issue now is that after moving Subject A to match the spot removal points I am now left to deal with Subject B standing next to Subject A and moving the image is not going to work this time. Appreciate the response

Report · Jun 07, 2019

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to do. Are the subjects in exactly the same place in each photo? If not, then copy/paste is obviously going to fail. If they are in the same place, copy and paste should work just fine, but every time you paste settings, these settings will replace any previous same settings. You cannot 'stack' multiple clone actions by pasting different single clone actions to a photo one after the other. That means that what you cannot do is this:

1: Remove subject A from photo 1, then copy/paste this to remove subject A from photo 3

2: Remove subject B from photo 2, then copy/paste this to remove subject B from photo 3

because step 2 will remove the settings from photo 3 that you pasted in step 1.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Report · Jun 11, 2019

Makes perfect sense Thanks for your responses!

Report · Jun 15, 2019

I have the exact same question and I think it makes perfect sense!!!

Basically ---- I have many photos of a champagne being popped by a couple. I cleaned up the first shot to perfection, with skin brushing and spot removal of spots on the concrete, and I'm trying to see if there's any way to copy ALL of those settings and get them to line up. The shots do not match perfectly angle-wise, so if I copy spot removal tool and skin softening from one photo to another they do not line up perfectly. I'd like to basically move the whole lot of spot removal spots - select all - drag to the right - if I get the first spot to like up, the rest of the spots should line up as well, and it would save me A TON of time in editing

Report · Jun 16, 2019

This is a user-to-user forum. For feature requests, go to https://feedback.photoshop.com. Search for your feature request first. If it is already requested by someone else, then don't create a new thread but add your vote to the existing request.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Report · Jun 16, 2019

It would be difficult in any case to move several spots together, and have then line up with each photo correctly, if these photos are taken with the camera turned slightly differently.

But you can, if you have access to Photoshop, make the photos themselves become aligned there. Because this interrupts the non-destructive workflow, the general processing of all images should be established before doing so. Once you can make them adopt the exact same composition and framing as your first processed shot - then after these have each been externally edited and then returned to LR, duplicating the spots back in LR will produce the matched results from photo to photo, that you want.

It might be laborious, but one way would be to use Edit in PS separately so as to open a copy of each photo as a standalone document. Then you can select the photos in LR again, and use Edit in PS as Layers to open them as layers of a further document. Then use PS techniques to align those layers against the prime image. Then transfer each aligned layer over to the corresponding standalone document (maintaining positioning - you can hold Shift key when you drag a layer from one PS document to another, for accurate common centring). Flatten (optionally) and Save, so LR sees this updated image with its content now aligned to the prime image.

In the course of this image alignment strange things will have occurred at the image edges, which would need to be cropped away as appropriate for each image - but this cropping should happen only after the image returns from PS to LR - not, within PS.

Report · Oct 10, 2021

I was looking for this solution too. I have series of 8 photos of a family on a bridge, and on the wooden beam behind them has graffiti that I want to remove. I have spot removed the graffiti on the first image with about 10 different spots/points. The series of pictures have same focal length and angle so the graffiti will be the same size and shape relative to each other, but each image is composed slightly differently (wasn't tripod shots), so if I copy the spots to the next image all the spot removal points are nearly there but just slightly to the left so they don't work. If I could somehow move all of the spots at once this would save me some editing time for the next 7 photos. But it doesn't seem possible to copy spots to the next image and then move all the spots together. Instead, I'll need to re-do the spot removal from scratch for each one OR I can copy/paste all the spots then select and move each target spot along with its source spot slightly in the same direction:( Either way it feels tedious to do this manually instead of just copying spots to each image then moving them all in one step.

Report · Apr 12, 2024

I too, would love to have such a feature. Perhaps the UI would be a freehand lasso to grab all the spots removal points then move them. This is extremely useful when you have a group of similar but not exactly the same pphotos, such as you have shown with the picture above. I wonder if Adobe is listening...