Best practices for using Heal or Clone tool

[lindsey_7002]

Hi folks - I'm new to photo editing.

My biggest challenge right now is effectively removing people or objects from backgrounds. I've tried generative AI remove, heal, and clone. Heal and clone work the best, but it's proved to be impossible in some cases to find the exact shade to replace the area. Even when using heal to remove a cord from a plain white wall, there's a slight difference in the shade of the white from the wall depending on how the sunlight or light hit the wall. Any tips? Am I doing something wrong?

I'm using Lightroom 8.0.

Many thanks!

[GoldingD]

Lightroom 8?

If correct, very very old

Can you in LrC, click on Help, then About, and take a screenshot of that, then paste that in a reply?

Actually, I suspect that you do not have LrC, but Lr:

The answer to your post can be very different for LrC than for Lr. In fact some would say, for LrC, use PS (as that is the easy way) . But if you have Lr, not LrC, than you probably do not have PS.

Now, a better answer than use PS could exist, but the answer should start out with the correct questions, LrC (many year out of date) or Lr (current). I for one do not use Lr so I would have no clue. As for LrC, I have not had that issue, and would need to research (but....)

P.S. you may want to include some samples, Some screenshots of what you have, and what you attempt, annotated as to what is what, and perhaps you may want to share your samples via DropBox or another share.

[lindsey_7002]

Thanks for your reply GoldingD!

I am using Lightroom: 

I erased my more conscientious edits, but here's an example of photos before and after using the clone tool:

[John R Ellis]

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

With your tiny screenshot, Generative Remove did a good job erasing the cord:

Be sure to uncheck Detect Objects (on by default in LR 14) -- it doesn't work well, especially with skinny objects and along the edges of photos. If that doesn't help, please attach a full-resolution JPEG exported from the unmodified original photo (not a screenshot), so we and Adobe can see the issue in detail. With nearly every of the several dozen problem photos posted here, we've been able to show how to quickly remove the desired objects.

[lindsey_7002]

Hi John, thanks for the reply.

I didn't use generative remove; I used clone. As you can see below in the full resolution jpegs, the cloned areas are blotchy.

[John R Ellis]

Generative Remove (with Detect Objects unchecked) did a pretty good job on the full-sized JPEG:

[GoldingD]

I am more that a bit confused as to Lr vs LrC. Info from the author indicated Lr, and not LrC, and this post at least temporally got moved from LrC community to Lr community. Now it is back in the LrC community, and an example on editing clearly shows LrC in use.

????

[John R Ellis]

I don't know the moderation history, but this thread is for all flavors of LR:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-generative-remove-feedback-lr-classic...

[lindsey_7002]

[image: image.png]

[GoldingD]

---

@lindsey_7002 wrote:
[image: image.png]

---

Did you send your above reply via Email? That will nt work. No attachment

[lindsey_7002]

Hi @GoldingD yes when I realized email attachments won't post, I submitted a reply from the browser. The email one posted late.