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 with removing distracting spots on an image that may be caused by dust on a camera's sensor. 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:

Question

Distraction Removal: Dust (Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic)

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
July 10, 2025
207 replies
21691 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 with removing distracting spots on an image that may be caused by dust on a camera's sensor.

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:

Bob Palmieri

Participant

Definitely one of the most disappointing tools in any of your products. Didn't find any dust in hi-rez scanned B&W neg.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

Author

This product is not designed to remove scanned dust. Please read the top-level post for this thread for more information.

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

Bob Palmieri

Participant

Thanks Rikk. Amusingly, I read the two bullet points regarding dust on scanned, yet seem to have missed the line above stating what you pointed out.

Somewhat amusing to me is the fact that someone went to the extent of defining the characteristics of spots on scans so well, yet there’s no implementation of an algorithm to remove them.

LDB2002

Participant

This tool is degraded. It can’t find dust it says - it can distinguish between squinting eyes and a scratch or reflecctions in an eye and dust. I thought it was pretty good when I first used it but it is not doing a very good job now.

SuperFabe

Known Participant

Clicked the “Provide Feedback” and it brought me here, so here is the feedback.

For every spot I select, LrC processes the selection. I have a dusty old slide (even blew and brushed off prior to converting) and removing spots becomes a click and wait approach. Why can’t we have an option to batch select, then LrC processes. While it processes I can do something else which is a better use of time.

ethel merman iii

Participant

It only removed maybe 5% of the dust. There should be an option to somehow make it find more dust.

F

Fastidious

Inspiring

Dust removal found no dust on an old scanned photograph

MoonMinnow

Participant

Dust removal helps me manually identify dust using the “visualize spots” filter, but when I click “Apply,” nothing happens. Is it supposed to automatically remove the spots? Does not remove my very obvious, very white spots on very dark subject.

MoonMinnow

Participant

Replying to my own post… I reread the purpose of this tool and understand this is to remove dust spots in a photograph caused by dust on the camera sensor. I was expecting it to remove representational dust in the image. For example, I photograph fabrics and there is often dust on the fabric. I was looking for a way to automatically touch up the photo to remove the photographed dust. The tool actually does do a good job removing camera sensor dust spots. And this is a huge time savor for me because I photograph in a studio on a white backdrop which shows all my camera sensor dust. So I am suddenly a fan of this tool. Perhaps the tool should be renamed to be more specific, such as “sensor dust spot removal.”

C

christinef58502318

Known Participant

Attention: Adobe employees! OP - Rikk Flohr_Photography

@MoonMinnow I agree with you completely about renaming the tool! It is causing too much confusion by just calling it a ‘Distraction removal>Dust’ tool. Users, quite obviously, assume that it should remove all dust spots from their photos, more than just sensor dust, as indicated by over 200 replies to the original post.

This is comment I made on this post about a month ago:

“My take on this feature, and I could be wrong, is that it is only designed (to quote the original post) to remove "distracting spots on an image that may be caused by dust on a camera's sensor", and also to quote "please note that scanned negatives are not in the scope of this feature at this time".

I guess the term 'dust removal' unfortunately implies far more than just sensor dust!

What users (including me) are clamouring for is a tool that will remove dust spots from scanned photos, negatives and slides. Will this ever be introduced?”

Z

ZappaJul

Participating Frequently

Tried a few tins on different images with dust, but so far, not useful at all. (None of the images were scanned negs).
It could it be more useful if it actually recognised any dust at all! Doesn't seem able to recognise even the most obvious dust spots.
Resolving the above would improve the experience. It would also be useful if user could indicate to app what’s dust (vs detail), or scratch (vs line to be retained), because all tests so far indicates it can't tell the difference even when it should be obvious from the context.