Apple retouch tool gone after update to Sequioa 15.1

It's been a while since I last checked in here, and I was hoping there might be at least a glimmer of good news. But nothing has changed and clearly Apple couldn't care less about what any of us say. And why should they? How many people have posted here? A vanishingly small number in the universe of Apple users, most of whom are probably thrilled with the new "clean up" tool, because it really works amazingly well if all you ever do is take selfies to post on social media and you want to eliminate Debbi or Johnny who is no longer your BFF. Really. It's amazing. You can make people vanish without a trace. Stalin would have loved it. Why did Apple have to screw up a good thing? It's just so senseless and gratuitous. Is absolutely everyone in tech a complete and total tool?

Just updated to Sequoia 15.2, Retouch is still not there and Clean Up continues as horrible as before. Let's also thank @JimH21111 for sharing his efforts with us. I have One Raw 2022 installed, but their retouch tool is far less efficient than Photo's retouch used to be before Apple terminated it on 15.1. The only way I noticed ** is not messing up everything is when I'm editing a photo taken on my iPhone. If the source image is from the web or from my DSLR, we suffer from the same "vacuum cleaner" tool AI effect (pixellation). Unfortunately Apple is definitely moving away from the Photography ecosystem to focus on exclusively on dummies for better (?) popularity. Sad, but true.

The new tool is great to remove large objects, and makes it faster to remove distracting things in the background. But it is much harder to clean up blemishes from a portrait.

And even removing objects like strangers in the foreground is not always working well, because the clean-up tool is handling a background poorly, if there is a perspective distortion. Straight lines are not aligned properly, if the background has a geometric pattern.

For example: I removed from tourists, occluding the front of a cathedral:

Before:

And after: The Retouching is easy to spot, and we need the clone tool of the old retouch brush back to correct the filled in background pattern.

alaskasherry, I sent the online form raising issues about it MULTIPLE times and have never heard back even once.

On a different note, I try using Clean Up to do little things, but even if I can get it to kind of work (nothing like ReTouch) it takes FOREVER unlike ReTouch which was lickety split fast. I am certain they removed ReTouch at the same time they added Clean Up (in a completely different place) because they knew virtually no one would use Clean Up if we still had ReTouch. It's all about forcing us to use it so maybe one day in the future it will get better. But Clean Up was launched before it was ready to be launched. They could have asked people to try it -- people would have signed up for that. But I prefer not to be an unsolicited guinea pig. This will probably be taken down, so I'll repost my two line answer above if it is. THANKS!

No one from Apple is here to read your plea. No one here is an Apple employee or Apple contractor. Apple Support does not monitor these user-to-user forums so your multi paragraph masterpiece is only seen by your fellow users, not Apple. For Apple to hear you please submit feedback through the proper channels.

Feedback - Photos - Apple

The problem is this new brush isnt nearly as good for skin retouching as the former retouch brush> Not even close! I used it for years doing quick retouches on hundreds of pix. I tried using this clean up brush on wrinkles and it leaves a mess in most uses. PLEASE APPLE BRING BACK THE RETOUCH BRUSH!!!!!!!

The clean-up tool makes it easy to remove large objects, because it will now fill in a fitting background, but is not so useful for removing dust and scratches.

And what is now completely missing is the clone tool - I have use it a lot to copy parts of the photo to other places and to multiply flowers or candles or similar. We can now only remove items, but no longer clone items.

I waited until 15.1 was released to avoid the initial bugs and complaints, but unfortunately I discovered the same only after I upgraded last weekend. I tried Clean Up many, many times, but it's really really awful. Such a weird move from Apple looks so crazy because many photography communities buy Apple hardware exactly to enjoy native apps like Photos (including me). Unless I'm getting too old in digital photography, I can't think of any serious photographer or expert advising Apple on this. At least at this point, AI should be welcomed as an additional help for beginners, but never as a replacement of a very important tool to all enthusiasts and professionals. One of the possible ways to have AI getting along is to learn the patterns of how we individually use each tool and try to repeat it when asked, but never cutting our "natural arm" by replacing it with a "cyber alternative" without any way back. Let's wait and hope they fix it on 15.2.

I am also using Luminar Neo for cloning and retouching. But on my MacBook Air the Luminar Photo editing extension is constantly hanging, after the macOS 15.1 update. When I want to use Luminar with Photos I have to I have to launch Luminar using the menu "Image > Edit with > Luminar Neo".

Another problem is, that Luminar Neo will save the edited versions as huge TIFF files and thus turn small HEIC with just 3MB into topping 80 MB. That is fine for important photos that I want to keep, but not necessary for each and every snapshot.

Completely agree with the fine folks here.

CLEAN UP creates large pixelated "blobs" on the image, thus rendering the function useless. Retouch allowed a lot more finesse and without it I'm forced to look for alternatives.

I'm actually very disappointed that Apple removed it without some kind of roll back feature.

I tried Movavi a couple of weeks ago, hoping to lessen my initial despair at the loss of the retouch brush. It didn't work for me at all and, as I couldn't figure out why, I just decided not to bother with it. Next I tried PicMonkey. The retouch brush seemed similar to that of Apple but, again, when I tried it, nothing happened, (i.e.., centered the circle over a speck of dust on my photo, clicked, and... nothing happened.) So I emailed a request for help. Two days later I received a reply which was not helpful. A conversation began with them. A day later, a different person responded basically repeating the same info that hadn't worked the first time. And a day after that, a third person contacted me asking if I had "separated my layers". Huh? Okay, but I made it clear that I'm strictly a black and white photographer. Nobody listened. So that's another option down.

I don't have faith that Apple will replace the retouch brush any time soon. I will clean certain of my negs and rescan, hopeful to rid them of dust.

This is absolutely insane! OMG! What was Apple thinking? I hate the new Clean Up tool. It is completely useless and I am still getting error messages in iPhoto that my edits can not be saved. These error messages pop up randomly and is so frustrating. Getting rid of the Retouch tool was a BIG MISTAKE! I loved having the Retouch tool to edit photos on the fly in iPhoto. The precision of Retouch is 1000% better than the Clean Up tool. Now, I have to import all my photos into Photoshop which takes more time, and use the clone tool. Geez! Can Apple make it any harder for the end user? Please bring back the Retouch tool!!!!!!

I, too, recommend others share their feedback at Feedback - Photos - Apple.

I have used the feedback link have posted here. I initially used it to send Apple feedback the same day I communicated at length to Apple Support about ReTouch and ended up informing Support it had been eliminated. That was a first. Since that date I have sent additional feedback, including to note Retouch was my favorite and most used Photos tool; to ask Apple to restore ReTouch or, in the alternative, to provide a way to downgrade in order to use ReTouch; and to ask Apple what it/their rationale is for eliminating only Retouch and for only adding Clean Up in its Sequoia software update.

However, I have received no response from Apple to any of the feedback I have submitted. Has anyone received any response to your feedback? Thank you.

I wish they had left both, the new tool only works if you have Internet, the old tool worked any time. And in some uses worked better. Why can't they add the new tool, but leave the ReTouch which worked fantastic? No need to remove it. Both have their uses.

To me... with Retouch, you could do all kinds of editing. With "Clean Up" (aka "the blob") you can remove a person, object.. whatever.. but that's it. If you really got into editing with Retouch, it was amazing how many things it could do. Compared to Retouch, the blob is horrible. >:p