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:

Rikk Flohr_Photography

Community Manager

Question

Distraction Removal: Dust (Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic)

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
July 10, 2025
157 replies
17159 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:

Show previous replies

A

Aimé Feys

Inspiring

It is a wonderful added value, hopefully this will also come to LrC

D

d_8226

Participant

Saves me nearly an HOUR on some photos, specifically ones that are B&W conversions and gallery sized.

L

LynnGrillo

Participant

In my case, the dust wasn't on my lens, it was on the mirror in which I was taking the photo. The filter could not identify any dust even though it is all over the photo. I know it's a crappy photo, but hey, if PS can make it better, then why not?

J

jrsforums

Inspiring

@LynnGrillo that does not look like sensor dust....which, in my experience, is black due to no/less light hitting sensor. As you say, if it is on mirror, the algorithm is not designed to handle that.

L

LynnGrillo

Participant

It's not. I said as much in the post. The dust is on the mirror. (not the mirror in the camera, the mirror in the photo!)

4

4applesleft

Participant

This is great. Such a time saver. Dust spots are the worst! I hope this feature makes it way to LightroomClassic as well.

Angel Scan

Known Participant

Now, after using it for a while, especially with photos from my older D750 camera, I'm very satisfied with the current state of the tool's development. It's not perfect yet (it probably never will be), but it already offers a tremendous time saving! (It would save even more time if it were finally implemented in Lightroom!!!)
Thank you,
Charly

S

Steve C2

Participating Frequently

Respectfully, my feedback is not positive. I just tested the ACR dust filter on a scan from an old print. The ACR dust filter is not a credible solution to removing dust from such tiffs, especially in comparison not only with Topaz Photo AI, but with Photoshop's Neural Photo Restoration filter. If the intent is to only identify and remove incidental dust from a digital image, IMO, this ACR filter is a complete waste of time. That can easily be accomplished elsewhere. You can contact me if you want more information.

J

jrsforums

Inspiring

@Steve C2 the reason it does not work for dust on prints is that it was not designed for it. As announced, it is designed to remove sensor dust.

D

Design-Kink

Participating Frequently

Then perhaps they should rename it to "sensor dust removal", then people subscribed to this thread would have a cleaner inbox.

R

Ronalmeida

Participating Frequently

In one of my photos, not all the dirt spots were deleted in version 14.5.1

J

jrg63

Participant

I have an action that does a Dust Removal, invokes a plugin that does HDR, then another Dust Removal as the HDR process quite often brings out other dust issues. I have the checkbox turned on to show the dialog inside the action. If I run this from Automate -> Batch Processing, it works correctly for the first image. When it processes the second image, the dust spot removal areas show up from the previous images as grey areas. Resetting Camera Raw doesn't fix this, resetting the Dust tool doesn't fix it. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to get it treat the image as a new image. Any suggestions?

M

MimiSnap

Participant

After using this tool to remove the dust spot, when I continue my editing and when I zoom out I can see, not the dust, but the circles that indicate where the dust spots were.