If you photograph teens, you’ll probably need to know how to remove skin blemishes. The good news is that it’s a simple edit in Photoshop.

While most of my editing is done in Lightroom, I use Photoshop’s Spot Healing Brush Tool to clean up teen skin. Just make the brush slightly larger than the bumps and click away.

I take care of this step first and then save the image back into Lightroom for further processing. (Command + E on my Mac takes the image into Photoshop, “save” brings it back into Lightroom as a separate psd file. I do not check the box telling Lightroom to stack my edit with the original file. I like them separate.)

Here is an example from our recent homeschool class picture session.

Before:

After:

I want my son to look back at his sophomore class pictures and remember his faux hawk and cocky grin—not cringe over his skin.

A small amount of work can make a dramatic difference. When my son saw his pictures on Facebook (providing my kids with new profile pictures is part of my job description), he thanked me.

Make friends with Photoshop’s Spot Healing Brush Tool if you photograph teens or anyone with blemishes. You’ll be glad you did.