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Rikk Flohr-Retired
Adobe Employee
July 10, 2025
Question

Distraction Removal: Dust (Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic)

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:

406 replies

Participant
October 12, 2026

sure, It shows dust spots but doesn't remove any.. You have to go in and manually remove still 🤷

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Participant
October 12, 2026

Visualize spots shows dust spots all over the digitized photo, remove dust finds no dust. I have yet to find a photo this feature works on.

There is an online dust remover that actually works, but they want a ridiculous amount of money per photo to remove the dust spots. Ever hopeful Adobe will get this fixed.

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God Save The Film
Captain_Zemo
Participating Frequently
October 10, 2026

Dust removal did not find dust on black gown. 

Reflection removal did not find reflections on marble column.  

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www.Bachrach.Photo
Participant
October 8, 2026

I’m really looking forward that Lightroom provides a function that automatically detects debris from the photographed subjects such as products and removes it through Ai.

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Participant
October 8, 2026

It removes marks on my camera lens perfectly, but not true dust on digitised slides. It would be fantastic if it did. Also it would be great if it could remove slight rain spots on the lens, much in the same way there is an alternative option for reflections which works very well. 

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Participant
October 5, 2026

I think the naming of this filter is unfortunate and I see from the comments here that I am not alone. Removing spots that generated from dust on the digital camera sensor is a pretty simple task!

I was eager to try the ‘Dust Removal tool’, expecting it to handle dust on digitised film and photographs—where removal is time-consuming—and I could not wait for a ‘one click’ solution to save hours.

Sadly, I realise now it doesn’t work on film based photographs that actually need a Dust Removal Tool.

I would say it is a completely unnecessary tool for the task that it actually performs.

 

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Known Participant
October 5, 2026

Exactly, I agree ​@reeversx1!  I have been suggesting this for a very long time.  

The name of the tool needs to be changed as it is resulting in a lot of disappointed users. 

A tool that actually does remove dust spots from scans etc is desperately needed. 

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Participant
September 30, 2026

Trying to remove dust from old black and white negatives but it tells me no dust is found.

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Participant
September 29, 2026

Hatte auf einer Reise sehr spät bemerkt, dass sich auf dem Sensor viel Staub angesammelt hat. Dank der Staubentfernung im Lightroom konnte ich die Bilder korrigieren. Hat einfach und sehr zuverlässig funktioniert. 

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Participant
September 27, 2026

Funktioniert nicht. Glasplatte mit staub 

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Participant
September 26, 2026

I have a lot of Dust that needs to be removed and Lightroom keeps telling me it can’t detect any dust. This is very disturbing!

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Participant
September 27, 2026

I completely agree, very disappointing. I think the question is what type of dust does it detect because the file I have has concentrated areas where there is a lot of dust I am removing manually with the spot healing brush in PS. By the way dust removal in Photoshop was no better. 

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