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|8 months ago
July 10, 2025
197 replies
20615 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:

C

CS-CC

Known Participant

First. Why is it so hard to provide feedback from the IN-APP-LINK? I don;t want to be redirected to a website community chat room. I want to provide actionable results quickly. I’m not paying for beta testing.

Okay, so spot removal. Why are we not outlining the location to remove spots and it automatically removes these spots like dandruff? Why is this feature not intuitive and easy to use? It selects hair and a ton of things in the visualization and the whole idea of automated helpers would be to avoid manual selection of 5000 spots to remove.

L

Lucio27965222ckpl

Participating Frequently

Buongiorno in camera raw “ eliminazione polvere ” non funziona molto bene , oltre volevo segnalare che , nella schermata di PS lo strumento pennello correttivo al volo non funziona per nulla , va perfezionato

Edward Barry Photography

Participant

Very disappointed in this feature, it just doesn’t work very well or sometimes not at all.

Jeannieo

Participant

After having a couple of black and white scanned images work very well in dust removal, I now have a scanned black and white image that does not work at all! Why would that be?

S

searlaid

Participant

It sucks! Leaves spots, and if you select any area within the photo, the remove tool boundary shows

robinc36343182

Participant

Definitely not working for me. Smoke and mirrors.

Ken 24680

Participant

I tried the new Dust Removal tool in my Lightroom Classic. Although this sounds like a great feature, it did not work at all. I tried it on a single photos with dust spots and hit the “apply” button. A pop up with a progress bar came up and it said the estimated time was 10 seconds. I waited over 4 minutes and nothing happened. I have reasonable interconnect connection and most everything I do on the interest is fairly fast. What am I doing wrong?

Ken 24680

Participant

I also tried the new Landscape Mask and it also did not work at all. These AI tools are worthless on the desktop LR Classic.

T

TomC601

Participating Frequently

Interestingly enough, the dust removal in ACR worked great on an image that LRc failed miserably on.

Athello9

Participant

Worked amazingly! Had a picture of an eagle flying, and the blue sky had several large dust specks. LR identified and removed them perfectly.

Athello9

Participant

To clarify, it was on LRc, desktop. Worked on several photos of a flying bird, bright blue background, with dust spots. I’d guess that’s about the easiest background for the tool to work on.

Opie Stark

Participant

Ended up just blurring my kid’s face and leaving the dust spot. Not a very useful tool

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