Skip to main content
Rikk Flohr-Retired
Adobe Employee
July 10, 2025
Question

Distraction Removal: Dust (Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic)

  • July 10, 2025
  • 391 replies
  • 28504 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:

391 replies

Participant
August 12, 2026

This tool doesnt work lol, never has

Known Participant
August 4, 2026

this does *not* work for studio product photography. it only removed marks found on the white background/cyc wall. the product is dusty for sure, and it didn’t find one piece of dust on the actual product. i really wanted this to work!!!

Rikk Flohr-Retired
Adobe Employee
August 4, 2026

Please read the top post in this thread.
It explains exactly what this feature is designed to do.  

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
Known Participant
August 4, 2026

As I have suggested before, change the name of the feature!!

bfitch
Participant
August 4, 2026

Ran into the same thing with my own film scans, and it's by design unfortunately. The tool is trained on sensor dust — small dark spots on a lighter background. On an inverted colour negative the dust comes out bright instead, there's far more of it, and half of it is fibres rather than round spots. The detector just doesn't see any of that, which matches what Rikk said about scanned negatives being out of scope.
 

Two things that help a bit inside Adobe's tools: run Dust Removal before you invert, if your workflow allows it — at that stage dust is still dark-on-light so the model has a chance. And for fibres, the Remove tool with a small brush does less damage than the automated pass, which starts eating grain if you push it.
 

Full disclosure, I build a small desktop tool called DustMagic for exactly this gap — batch dust removal on colour film scans (negatives, slides, Kodachrome). It only changes the pixels it flags as dust and shows a mask of what it changed so you can check it. It won't do silver B&W like HP5 or Tri-X, so Bob's case is one it can't solve. Trial is free and unrestricted (output is watermarked) if anyone wants to test it on their own scans first. Leaving the link out per forum rules — easy to find by name.

Tim_McEnroe
Participant
July 29, 2026

fantastic improvement

Participating Frequently
July 19, 2026

reflection removal needs a lot of work.

Participant
July 17, 2026

It does not work well with underwater photos. It found two spots in this image. 

 

Rikk Flohr-Retired
Adobe Employee
July 17, 2026

Underwater debris/backscatter is not in the scope of this feature ​@Peter . Please read the top-level post for mor information. 

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
Participant
July 11, 2026

Dust spots are NOT removed. And I cant even remove a blade of grass from a photo. Getting very frustrated and mad. We pay a lot of money for this and its not working…….

Participating Frequently
July 8, 2026

Wake me up when this removes dust from products in the studio! LOL I got prematurely excited about this. Back to the healing brush I go!

Participant
August 12, 2026

Exactly

Participating Frequently
July 3, 2026

Cordial saludo. Tengo la ultima actualizacion de Ligthroom, pero reconoce las personas para eliminarlas. Que puede ser? Gracias

Participating Frequently
July 1, 2026

Works sensationally, about to become my favorite Lr feature.