Apple retouch tool gone after update to Sequioa 15.1

I went to Apple's product feedback page and left a comment. I encourage users to do this so that hopefully they get the message.

Product Feedback - Apple

Illini74 wrote: Apple, PLEASE

We are not Apple. If you would like to make suggestions to Apple, go here:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

I have.

Apple, PLEASE bring back the Retouch tool, nothing that's been added with the clean up function remotely does the job Retouch did to clean up blemishes on photos.

ive just given feedback too..... PLEASE EVERYBODY DO THIS!!!! what a blunder taking away the retouch tool

I can confirm that the retouch tool has been deleted with the 15.1 update. I stupidly updated my Studio without waiting for news of problems like this. The Clean Up feature (a completely useless gimmick that no serious photographer would ever use) is no substitute for the retouch feature. I am in the middle of scanning old slides and the retouch feature is needed to eliminate dust artifacts. As a work-around, I have fired up an old Mac running Catalina but it doesn't have the processing power to really do the job. I find this move by Apple completely inexplicable. If this is not fixed in the next few weeks, I will have to switch to Lightroom. The Mac community needs to spread the word about this colossal blunder by Apple.

I just received this after I posted here agreeing with everyone what a mistake Apple made removing the essential feature in Photos: Retouch.

"We’ve removed your post Apple retouch tool gone after update to Sequioa 15.1because it contained either feedback or a feature request that was not constructive."

There was nothing I wrote that was different, offensive or triggering than the other posts here. Perhaps because I used the words d*mb*st and j*ke and an all caps wh*. Apple is watching.

This is helpful. I am starting to investigate plug in solutions as I really don’t want to migrate my whole library from Photos.

Can you confirm the name of the free app you downloaded? If so, can you share the link? I can't find any MORAVI, but a paid app called MOVAVI.

Done! I just posted the same complaint. Hope it helps!

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.

I did it as soon as I realized it. The Apple tech support guy kept telling me he would help me find where retouch was located now. Finally, he figured out it no longer exists. He did not seem to know before my contact yesterday. I also told him about Clean Up and how bad it is. He said there’s nothing that can be done once you’ve updated your software. Evidently, Apple did not promote the change at all. He sent me a link to give feedback, which I did immediately. I agree everyone needs to do so. Research needs to be restored. This is just boneheaded in every way on the part of Apple.

iPapa wrote:

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.

...

This is a new security feature. It makes it easy to blur faces, when we share photos with people in them. Just click on a face and it will be blurry and pixellated.

I found that I can avoid to trigger the pixellation by zooming in on the face as far as possible. Then I can remove freckles or other blemishes. But this has previously been much easier with the cloning tool, that is gone now.

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.

Clean Up does not work like Retouch does. Apple needs to bring back Retouch. Clean Up is no equivalency.