Free Photo Blemish Remover

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on February 01, 2012

Although the occasional skin blemish is a fact of life for most people, no one wants their imperfections to be immortalized in a photo. Free Photo Blemish Remover is an easy-to-use tool that can quickly remove blemishes, whether they appear on the image's subject or the image itself. The program can't handle jobs that require a lot of nuance, but if you need to get rid of a zit or spot, it's up to the task.

The program's interface is fairly straightforward, with buttons across the top representing its features. We opened a photo of a person with moderate acne and got started right away. First, we selected the size of the area that needed correction, adjusting a circular selection tool with a slider ranging from one to 500. Once we'd matched the size of the selector to the size of the blemish, we simply centered it on the pimple and clicked. The program automatically cloned a nearby patch of skin and replaced the zit with it. The results weren't perfect, but given the fact that our subject had a somewhat uneven skin tone to begin with, they were a definite improvement and didn't look particularly fake. Obviously, if you have a large area that needs to be corrected, this automatic cloning tool can be problematic; we tried to eliminate a large patch of blemished skin on our subject's temple and she ended up with three eyes. To tidy up snapshots and perform basic restoration jobs, Free Photo Blemish Remover works just fine, but for professional-quality results you'll likely need a tool that's a little more sophisticated.

Free Photo Blemish Remover installs and uninstalls without issues.