Skip to main content
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
July 10, 2025
Question

Distraction Removal: Dust (Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic)

  • July 10, 2025
  • 217 replies
  • 22755 views

This post applies to Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic.

 

Dust Removal is no longer in Early Access status and can be found in the Remove edit panel for Camera Raw & Lightroom Classic. Dust Removal helps remove distracting spots in an image that may be caused by dust on a camera's sensor and is also effective on dust on the rear lens element.

 

Once enabled, your image will be scanned, and any detected dust spots will be automatically removed using Content-Aware Remove. For refinement, you can select one or multiple spots to delete or refresh. Batch removal is also supported; simply select the "Dust" checkbox under "Remove" in the copy settings dialog.

Please note that scanned negatives are not in the scope of this feature at this time. 

 

  • Dust spots on scans tend to be located in the focal plane, with the negative and very sharp, while sensor dust is typically positioned out of the focal plane and therefore not in focus.
  • Scanned negative dust typically appears as white spots on a darker background, whereas perceived sensor dust tends to appear as dark spots in lighter areas. 

 

We would love to hear your feedback on Dust Removal! Please give it a try and let us know what you think:
 

  • How is it useful?
  • How could it be more useful?
  • What could we do to improve your experience?

 

Lisa Ngo, Product Manager


Also see this video by @brianmatiash where he demos the feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwpUX4b6igY 

 

Posted by:

217 replies

mickvanz
Participant
May 19, 2026

great tool, so much easier

Known Participant
May 13, 2026

My experience so far is that dust removal for negative scans is not nearly as useful as it could and should be.

 

Thoughts / ideas

  1. Create a slider that would visualize just what it would consider a dust spot before hitting apply.
  2. Allow for that slider to be adjusted later and the re apply
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
May 13, 2026

Please read the top post. This feature is for Lens Element dust and Sensor dust only. 

Scans and Negatives are not covered at this time. 

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
mario_yanez
Participant
May 11, 2026

I think the dust removal works quite well

Inspiring
May 11, 2026

How about anything other than that?  Put the word “sensor” in the feature name.  Then the purpose is obvious.

“Sensor Dust Removal”

“Sensor Spot Cleaner”

“Sensor Phase Departiculator”

 

Inspiring
May 10, 2026

The feature really needs to be renamed.  I initially thought this was for removal of dust and specks from the image subject rather than to deal with artifacts caused by dust on the sensor.  If you need to clean up specks in focus on the subject you need to Ps → Filter → Noise → Dust & scratches.

Known Participant
May 11, 2026

Great idea ​@jbinco - I made this same suggestion, possibly renaming it to ‘Sensor Dust’, in a post a couple of weeks ago and ​@Rikk Flohr_Photography gave this answer:

“The tool also works on rear lens element dust (and in certain cases, front element dust), so Sensor Dust wouldn’t be quite accurate either. “

I then suggested that it could be called “In-camera dust”!  Or that perhaps Adobe could come up with a better name.  No response. 

Being called just “Dust” is so confusing!

 

 

 

 

Inspiring
May 13, 2026

Yes, “Camera Dust” would be totally sensible.  Most folks include the lens when visualizing a camera.  The name just needs something to delineate the function from subject speck removal.

NicolasRemy
Participating Frequently
May 8, 2026

In underwater photography, we get a lot of spots in the background of our photos (we call them backscatter), which is usually floating sand or other particles floating in the water.

At the moment, the dust removal doesn’t work on them, but it would be great if it could. 

Key information: these particles tend to be brighter than the water background.

Nicolas REMY - https://www.nicolaslenaremy.com
Known Participant
May 4, 2026

The problem with this tool it seems to actively seek out dark spots. With inversions, the dust on film scans are white spots. So it’s not working for film scans

Participating Frequently
May 1, 2026

Direi di migliorare l’eliminazione della polvere  in PS , e poi in filtro camera raw “ crea nuova maschera ” perché se lavori su cielo e aggiungi architettura lavori su tutti e due ? Per me devono essere divisi ,grazie per il miglioramento .

 

Participating Frequently
April 30, 2026

LRC does not do as good a job at eliminating spots as PS does.

ScubaQuest
Participant
April 30, 2026

This does not detect backscatter on underwater images. Is it supposed to detect backscatter?

michael_5661
Participant
April 29, 2026

Trying to remove dust from film negative scans and it can’t find the dust. I think maybe because the inverted negative makes all of the dust white?

Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
April 29, 2026

Please read the primary post on this thread. It explains the scope of the feature and addresses your question directly. 

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
Known Participant
April 29, 2026

@Rikk Flohr_Photography   Adobe - please change the name of this tool or you will continue to get hundreds more of these  user complaints! 

In a previous reply I suggested ‘In-camera dust’, or perhaps Adobe can come up with a better name?