Automatic removal handles the common case: a known mark, in a known place, over a background it can rebuild. The patch tool is for everything else — a stray logo the detector missed, a date stamp, a mark lying across a boundary where the automatic repair guessed wrong.

It works the way Photoshop's Patch Tool works. You draw around the problem, then drag that selection onto a clean part of the photo. The clean pixels replace the marked ones, and the tool re-lights them so the join disappears.

Step one: draw around the mark

Hold the left mouse button and trace a loop around the watermark. Any shape — this is a freehand lasso, not a rectangle. Following the mark's actual outline gives a better result than boxing it in, because everything inside your loop gets replaced, and a tight loop replaces less of the photograph.

Leave a small margin, two or three pixels beyond the mark's edge. Watermarks have soft antialiased edges, and a loop drawn exactly on the visible boundary leaves a faint halo of the mark behind.

Step two: drag onto clean pixels

Press inside your selection and drag. A second outline follows your pointer — that is the source, the part of the photo the repair will be built from. Watch that outline, not the selection.

While the source still overlaps the watermark, the outline is red and the tool says so. That state matters more than it sounds: if you release there, the repair is partly built from the mark you are removing, which is what leaves a faint ghost of the original shape. The tool refuses that rather than doing it quietly.

Drag until the outline turns blue and the message reads Good source, then release.

Choosing where to drag to

The source should look like what should have been behind the watermark. Practically:

  • Stay on the same surface. If the mark is on a wall, take from that wall — not from the floor below it, even if the floor is closer.
  • Don't cross an edge. A source that straddles a boundary drags that boundary into the repair.
  • Follow the direction of the texture. On wood grain, brick or fabric, drag along the pattern rather than across it.
  • Distance costs nothing. A perfect match on the far side of the photo beats a poor one next door — the tool corrects for the lighting difference.

What happens on release

Two things. First the source is nudged a few pixels to whichever nearby position lines up best with the surroundings — on a patterned background, being half a stripe out of step is visible no matter how well the brightness matches, and that is not something anyone can aim by hand. Then the transplanted pixels have their own brightness discarded and rebuilt from the rim of the selection, so a patch taken from a lighter part of the photo still arrives at the right tone. That second step is why the result looks repaired rather than pasted.

If it still looks wrong

Undo and try a different source before trying a different selection — the source is usually the problem. If the background genuinely has no clean equivalent anywhere, patch it in two or three smaller pieces rather than one large one; a small area needs less invention.