(Early Access) Distraction Removal: Dust (Camera Raw)

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Announcing Early Access to a new feature in Adobe Camera Raw (17.5) – Dust Removal

This post applies to Camera Raw.

The team is sharing an early look at Dust Removal, which can be found in the Remove edit panel for Camera Raw. 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 the detected dust spots will automatically be removed using Content-Aware Remove. For refinement, you can select one or multiple spots to delete or refresh. Batch removal is supported as well, just 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 in the focal plane with the negative and very sharp, while sensor dust is typically out of the focal plane and not in focus.
  
• Scanned negative dust tends to show as white spots on a darker background, while perceived sensor dust tends to show 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:

[PalasAtenea]

Lo de quitar manchas... GENIAL¡¡¡ Ahorra un montón de tiempo. 

[chelbertelchen]

I used it now the whole morning and afternoon because I had to work on many pictures of a friend and his dirty lens... 😄 
It is absolutely faboulus so far! THANK YOU!!!

[ln119]

Remove Dust work fine. Can we have a kind of preview as in Refelections and the possibilitie to Undo some spots removal.
Thanks.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

"For refinement, you can select one or multiple spots to delete or refresh."

See first post above.

[Antonio_Fortuny3947]

És fantàstic- Tèstalvia un munt de feina. M'agrada molt!

[jimtron]

I tried dust removal just now on a b&w negative, raw file shot with mirrorless camera. I opened the file via LR, so it would have my adjustment to positive, and then in PS went to Camera Raw. I enabled dust distraction removal, and got "no dust spots were found in this photo," despite some obvious dust, see screenshot. 

I wonder if this is mainly/only intended for sensor dust, or potentially also for film scans?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Please see the note on Scanned Negatives in the top post. @jimtron 

[Bruce Richardson]

I'm just replying to this post since you are an Adobe employee.  When you click "report" from the app, you are not exposed to the caveat.

[Antonio_Fortuny3947]

Després de provar-ho altra vegada, he vist que deixa unes petites marques
on abans eren les taques de polç.

[JLobert]

For curiosity, what do you see when you click on "visualize spots"? See my post below. I believe the algorithm is based on that: outlines around the dust spot, which you may not see as such in a film scan, because your dust spots are not on the sensor, but rather on the original negative. 

[adonuff]

I'm having the same problem with film scans, P/S came up with no dust found? Seems it will not work on scans that have white spots due to dust on the negatives.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

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

[frankb76907269]

This new feature is a great idea. However, in nighttime photos, it only detects some of the spots and sometimes uses poor repair. But the feature has great potential!
Such a feature would also be great for hot pixels and white stuck pixels caused by camera sensors.

[Tone357]

It doesn't work at all for me. When I hit reply, the box that shows it working appears for less than a second and is gone. I also get a message that says., No dust was found, when the photo is full of dust!

[Drugstore]

Tried it but didn't find any of these obvious dust spots. Also no message that nothing could be found.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

This function works only on sensor dust spots (at the moment). Are you sure this is what you have here?

[Marco Basile Images]

Fantastic tool. Maybe change the spot circles to a brighter white or red for better visibility? 

[phudelot]

Outil fantastique.  Quand c'est sur Lightroom, c'est Urgent.

[JLobert]

This is mind blowingly effective and amazing! Kudos for that feature. It detects dust spots that are only visible to the eye when the "visualize spots" feature is cranked up, so this is implemented really well. I also love that it will re-calculate this for each photo when pasted as a sync, because dust spots move as the camera is used. 

Is there an estimate when this will be available to LIghtroom? I would hate to miss out on it there. Thanks!

[Bob_H2o]

Would love it if this could be modified to identify and remove backscatter for underwater photography.

[Manniac]

I was so curious how this would work - but sadly removing *sensor* dust is not useful for me. I have thousands of negative scans with billions of dust particles waiting to be removed. I hope you'll soon consider us analog people too.

(Also, please add a true negative mode for lightroom. Negative Lab Pro gets you only so far.)

[RenatoNPhoto]

I just tried the dust removal tool, but it didn’t detect dust in areas with midtones and details. I understand that if dust is not obvious, neither ACR nor a human observer may notice it. I believe a dust removal tool could benefit from a “pilot image” where dust is clearly visible, which could then serve as a pattern or map to correct other images. A plain white background with dust spots might reveal many spots that aren’t noticeable in actual photos and may not need removal. However, in real photos, some dust spots may be mistaken for image details, so using a pattern from a pilot image could provide more reliable guidance for ACR.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

This exactly what Canon does in its own proprietory software.

[JLobert]

Take a look at my above image. Did you try to use the "visualize spots" feature? I believe it is exactly what you are looking for, except it is white on black not black on white. It shows many spots that you won't see with your eyes. The algorithm seems to be doing an excellent job not to remove features. It does not remove star points or trails, for example.