Retouch Skin and Clothing Without Ever Leaving Camera Raw

Adobe Camera Raw now handles a full retouching workflow, blemish removal included, without pushing you into layers and manual cloning. The new one-click Remove tool runs on AI, finds imperfections you might miss on your own, and gives you sliders to pull the effect back instead of forcing an all-or-nothing result.

Aaron Nace walks through the entire process in Photoshop, starting with a step most people skip. Before touching any adjustment, he converts the background layer into a smart object through Filter, then Convert for Smart Filters. That single move keeps everything non-destructive, so every edit you make inside Adobe Camera Raw can be toggled on and off later. From there he opens Filter, then Camera Raw Filter, and heads to the Remove tools on the right. The new blemish option sits under the removal panel, and it works with a single button labeled Apply.

Click Apply, and skin blemishes clear in about three seconds. Nace points out that this uses AI but costs no credits, so it stays free as long as you have Camera Raw. His favorite control is the fade slider, which lets you drop imperfections to zero, bring them back to full strength, or stop anywhere in between. He splits retouching into two categories: temporary marks like a pimple that vanishes in a month, and permanent features that stay on a person's face for life. The fade slider fits the second group, since erasing a defining mark completely can strip away part of who someone is unless the client asks for it.

The Refine button is where the tool shows its range. Nace clicks it and the panel highlights spots he admits he wouldn't have caught alone, including a bright reflection and marks on the shoulder and chest. Two brushes handle the cleanup: Restore brings a feature back, and Remove takes it out. He paints Restore over the marks he wants to keep and Remove over the rest, targeting things like acne, dirt, and mascara rather than the identifying features that belong on the subject.

This approach fits the way retouching has been drifting for a while now. The heavy lifting moves to automated detection, while your judgment decides what stays and what goes. That distinction is the real skill here. A tool that finds every flaw is only useful if you know which flaws to leave alone, and Nace keeps returning to that idea by preserving marks that make his subject recognizable. If you shoot portraits for clients, the smart object setup also gives you a safety net for revision requests. When a client asks for a spot back weeks later, you double-click the Camera Raw Filter, hit Refine, and Restore the area without redoing anything.

Retouching doesn't stop at the face, and Nace spends the second half on clothing. Using the same Remove tool with Use Generative AI checked, he brushes over bunched fabric, wrinkles, folds, and stitching, adjusting brush size with the bracket keys. The tool understands it needs to smooth wrinkles and straighten fabric, and he stacks several fixes to process at once. He treats seams and small folds as details worth cleaning unless a clothing brand needs them for realism. Toggle the shirt edits on and off, and the difference across the whole frame makes his point about why garments matter as much as skin.

Because everything sits inside a smart filter, nothing is final. Nace shows the opacity slider that lets you dial back your most recent removal, then cancels a change entirely because he decided a mark was worth keeping. That freedom to revisit an edit as many times as you want, with no permanent commitment, is the throughline of the whole video.

Watch the full walkthrough in the video above to see every step and slider in action.