How to remove dark spots and acne marks from a photo

Clean Up is the one removal tool built into Photos. Apple's guide presents it as the tool for distracting objects, and a single dark mark on a cheek is small and distinct enough to be marked like one. For one or two marks, on a phone that has it, nothing else is needed.

None of these steps were tried for this guide: Clean Up needs Apple Intelligence, and the iOS 27 simulator our screenshots come from has none. The steps are Apple's; the advice on which marks to choose is ours.

Heal deals with one mark per tap. It covers the mark with skin copied from close by, and gives the patch the colour and shading of the skin in a narrow ring just around the tap. A dark spot ends up the colour of the cheek beside it, with real pores over it, and nothing outside the tap changes.

Skin is the second step, for the blotchy colour often left between marks. It smooths the skin of the face and then puts part of the fine detail back, never less than 35%. Both run on the iPhone, and the photo is not sent anywhere.

A dark spot is a difference in colour, not in texture. The skin over a flat mark has the same pores and fine lines as the skin around it; only its colour has changed. Covering the mark with nearby skin corrects the colour and keeps a real surface.

Blurring does the reverse. It takes the texture away and keeps the colour, spread out, so a dark spot turns into a larger, paler smudge while the pores around it go soft. Blur a mark until it is gone and everything near it is blurred just as hard.

PhotoTune's Skin tool cannot go that far. It never returns less than 35% of the fine detail it smooths, which keeps pores, and also means it can soften a mark but never remove it: to Skin, a small mark is fine detail just as a pore is. Distinct marks are a job for Heal.

One distinct mark, such as a single dark spot on the chin or the mark one pimple left, is the easy case: one tap in Heal, or one tap or circle in Clean Up.

A cluster of small marks after a breakout is where it pays to choose. Tap the darkest and largest, then look at the photo at normal size. The example at the top of this page took 37 taps and left a group of small marks on one cheek, and it still reads as the same face rather than as an edit. Chasing every last mark takes far longer, and the more patches of copied skin there are, the likelier they are to show.

Uneven tone across an area, such as redness left after a breakout or one cheek darker than the other, is not a heal job. Heal matches each patch to the colour around the tap, so inside a red patch the healed skin comes out red too. Skin softens blotchy colour, but it does not recolour an area: a cheek that is evenly pink stays pink.

Freckles, moles and birthmarks are part of what a face looks like from one year to the next, and people who know you would notice one missing. Acne marks and redness after a breakout usually look different a month later. One question sorts most of them: would this mark be in a photo taken next month?

Sun spots and freckles can look alike. A darker spot that sits among freckles and matches them is part of the pattern, and removing it leaves a gap. One that is clearly darker or larger than the rest stands out the way an acne mark does.

None of this is a rule. Heal removes a mole as readily as an acne mark if you tap it, so the choice is yours.

Google's Snapseed is free on the App Store, and its listing says it has no subscriptions, purchases, ads or watermarks. Its help page sums up its Healing tool in one line: brush or tap unwanted spots. The listing also names Selective, which adjusts brightness, contrast or saturation in specific areas, the kind of local control that can tone down one patch of redness and that PhotoTune does not have. We have not tested either on skin.

PhotoTune is an iPhone app; there is no Android or web version. Saving an edited photo needs a subscription, and the annual plan starts with 3 days free. The pricing page has every plan and what the trial turns into.

What this guide says about software other than PhotoTune comes from the pages below, read on the dates shown. The PhotoTune screenshots are captures of the app.