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ffolkes
Participant
August 27, 2026
Open for Voting

P: “Removing New Dust Spot…” dialog remains stuck when rapidly adding multiple Dust Removal spots

Lightroom Classic 15.5.1 and prior versions. Using MacOS, but I doubt that matters for this bug.

When using the Dust removal tool (in the Distraction Removal panel), if you rapidly add dust removal spots, the “Removing New Dust Spot...” dialog will stick and not disappear even after LR has finished adding the spot.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Enable Dust removal.
  2. Start rapidly clicking multiple spots, without giving each time to complete.
  3. The busy dialog will popup, timeout, but fail to dismiss automatically.
  4. Manually press Cancel to dismiss it yourself.

3 replies

Anshul_Saini
Community Manager
Anshul_SainiCommunity Manager
Community Manager
September 11, 2026

Hi ​@ffolkes,

Thanks for reaching out. Since you’re already on Lightroom Classic 15.5.1, could you help us with a couple of additional details so we can try to reproduce this accurately?
 

When the “Removing New Dust Spot…” dialog gets stuck, does clicking Cancel only dismiss the dialog, or does it also affect any of the dust removals that have already finished processing?
 

Also, approximately how many rapid clicks does it usually take before the dialog gets stuck, and does it reproduce consistently?

If possible, please also share:
 

  • A short screen recording showing the workflow from enabling Dust Removal through to the stuck dialog.

  • Help > System Info > Copy, pasted into your reply.

  • A sample original image on which you can consistently reproduce the issue. This would allow us to test the same file and workflow on our end.

    You can upload the original image and recording to Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer, or a similar file-sharing service and send me the download link via DM.
     

Having the original file and recording should give us a much stronger reproduction case if we need to take this to the product team. Looking forward to your response.
 

Best,
Anshul Saini

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ffolkesAuthor
Participant
October 11, 2026

Hi,

 

Thank you for the reply, sorry for my delay. It happens reliably on any image (I’m using CR2’s from my 5D IV) and this video demonstrates it. Usually it takes 2 or 3 or 4 rapid dust spot clicks before the UI will trip up and do it. Happens with 100% reproducibility.

As a programmer myself, I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening. It feels like upon the first dust spot click there is code that starts the dust spot removal process with a timeout to handle the possibility of a removal taking a long time - eg. if a removal takes 5 seconds, it wants to show the user a popup letting them know LR is still working. This part is fine. However, the problem occurs when another removal request comes along while that first spot’s timer is still running: ie. the timer counts down to zero and runs its payload code, sees a dust removal running, assumes it’s still the first spot taking a long time, and so it shows the popup thinking the first spot removal is still going. The timer’s code doesn’t realize the current dust removal it sees is actually from a NEW event. And since all the spots actually do complete quickly, nothing ever tells the UI to close the popup, since at no point did any one dust spot removal actually take long enough to trigger it. Hence the phantom popup awaiting an autodismiss call that is never coming. I think someone needs to make sure whatever queuing LR is doing for the dust spot removal tool somehow serializes the dust removal events to link them to their respective this-is-taking-too-long timers, so it doesn’t step on its own toes.

 

Here is a video: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ezt1blt9d9a05p50s1cky/20261011_033515.mp4?rlkey=k9w8b1mlqhn1c1adj5j9s6kvc&st=bh93tjih&dl=0

 

Thank you,

ffolkes

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Anshul_Saini
Community Manager
Anshul_SainiCommunity Manager
Community Manager
October 12, 2026

Hi ​@ffolkes,

Thank you for following up and for providing the recording and such a detailed explanation.

I’m able to reproduce the issue on my end as well. Rapidly adding multiple dust spots can leave the “Removing New Dust Spot…” progress dialog stuck, even though the dust removal operations themselves have completed.

I’m going to raise this with the Lightroom Classic product team for further investigation. I’ll include your recording and the rapid-click workflow you described.

There’s nothing further you need to test at this point. I’ll update the thread if the team needs any additional information or when I have something to share.

Thanks again for taking the time to document this so thoroughly.

Best,
Anshul Saini

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