P: Dust removal - also remove insects in the sky

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
August 9, 2026
5 replies
80 views

In summer there is a lot of small insects in the air, which results in lots of small black dots in the sky.
Unfortunately Dust removal cannot detect it as a dust, so I have to remove them one by one with Remove tool, which is not comfortable.

It would be nice to improve this.

Or is there any trick I'm missing?

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

My point is that dust removal is designed to not remove spots that aren’t dust spots. If it did remove other spots (like birds), that would be reported as a bug.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

michaljanataAuthor

Inspiring

ok, i will try again - i’m not saying the tool would be mandatary to use - it would be a choice, for people, who would like to get rid of 2px small black dots on the sky not considered as birds, therefore they certainly wouldnt report it as a bug..

not mandatory, but choice, option - if you can accept that

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Dust on the sensor is something that does not belong in the photo. Insects are things you may not want on your photo, but they are part of the scene you photographed. If dust removal would remove insects, then it would also remove small birds flying at a certain distance. You probably wouldn’t want that, so that would not be an improvement. Sometimes your photos still need old fashioned handwork.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

michaljanataAuthor

Inspiring

When I see what LR can do now, I don't see any reason, why it wouldn't do this. Little sharp black dots on sky might be very easy these hays. Also it could be size based customized, so you could exclude a bird.

Insects are for sure part of the scene, but bunch of small black dots are surely not wanted as part of the photo - same as many other stuff you are removing or retouching, but that would be probably for another philosophical discussion.

And small birds is flying in distance also doesn't need to look like a bird, but little black dots, which is rather distracting then wanted.

D

daleducatte

Participating Frequently

The ability to automatically remove facial blemishes was recently added to Camera Raw; see https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/desktop/ai-and-generative-features/remove-blemishes-from-photos.html. It’s not in Lightroom yet, but the concept is similar to what you’re suggesting, for faces only. I too can imagine an AI-based feature where, say, I select part of a photo (or the whole photo) and Lightroom looks for spots and removes them.

The four screenshots I attached show how I work through it now, with one of my typical closeup photos of a flower where the camera has captured lots of spots that our human eyes barely notice (or just ignore). Top left is the original photo; top right is a zoomed-in portion. Bottom left shows all the Generative AI Remove selections I actually made to clean up this photo. Bottom right shows the results, which are close to flawless in terms of matching colors and textures. Generative AI Remove is the only one of the distraction removal or healing tools that handles this kind of retouching well for photos like this.

So it seems that since AI can repair spots like this so well, it could potentially identify them and save us the time-consuming effort of selecting each spot individually. The spots have characteristics that make them distinct from the surrounding colors and textures, just as you noted. And it would seem like a logical extension of the blemish-removing capability Adobe added to Camera Raw.

Anyway: thanks for posting the idea!

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