Distraction Removal: Dust (Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic)

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

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:

[Lucille_Skye]

This is a feature I've been waiting on forever. Thanks. 
It works great on the sky, but not so well in water. Please see attached. 

[Electric_Sunflower0D4B]

I do quite a bit of aquatic / underwater photography with split shots - Often have little droplets as well as a few spots coming from the camera (especially visible on the sky area) and although it is not 100 % it does help and works well.

[Electric_Sunflower0D4B]

[christiankremser]

It doesn't work with merged HDR photos. It works perfectly with individual single images.

[defaultoj97g2nhh5kd]

it would have been much better to have an option to clean backdrop floor/background and remove distractions like objects . Loving the new updates though.

[rene_4982]

I hoffte das diese neue Funktion auch bei Unterwasser-Backscatter-Problemen hilft - Leider findet diese Funktion (fast) gar nichts.

[Dan_Madsen0742]

This is not working for me. I get the message no dust spots found. I'm trying to remove white spots caused by dust on the scanned film image of older photographs. I can remove them manually with the healing brush tool, but it's very tedious. 

[Erik Bloodaxe]

@Dan_Madson  Please read the topmost post in this thread. Your answer is there. 

[Angel Scan]

To "clean" scanned slides or negatives, you need special apps like SilverFast.

[CooledgeR]

Worthless.  Two dozen images digitized from film (which is notorius for adding dust spots) and the program has so far found no dust on any.  All had to be hand-retouched.  As I said.  Worthless.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

Please take the time to read the topmost post in this thread. Your answer is there.

[CooledgeR]

When the program appears to have found some dust spots, one is invited to do more dust remeoval if one cares to, at which point it hangs up and eventually must be canecelled because nothing is happening.  Worthless.  Not ready for prime time or anything else IMHO.

[johnt41947401]

Can I suggest this thread gets locked pending an update to this feature as posts are becoming repetitve?

[Keith Levit]

FANTASTIC - It's a game changer.  For the last few months I haad to edit in Photoshop Camera Raw Filters, which I thought helped so much.  But now directly in Lightroom - saves hours of editinging time.  THANKS SO MUCH!

[CooledgeR]

I sent it once. If it is repeating, it is not me who is doing it.

<removed for privacy>
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

[Peter Larsen]

Game changer! Saving so much time, thank you!

[Harry K]

Hi. I tried this feature on a picture with a particuler kind of dust: small residu from fibers.
It seems that the dust removal function does not yet handle this kind of dust well. 

[Richard10640]

This is definitely going in the right direction but for my application particularly underwater backscatter removal this tool doesn't really do the job.  See the example I added where sediment or many small particles show up as a cloud in front of me.  The tool doesn't really pick up on the small spots.  I do like how it does larger spots so this has great promise.  You of course know that there is a product (specifically for underwater backscatter) that does this but I hope Lightroom gets most of the way there included in my package.  Well done for implementing this.

[RMcC341]

Works like a charm. Thank you.

[Ben W. @byfieldpitman]

When copying or Syncing the 'Dust' Removal to another image, I think the default option should be for all of the dust spots that were detected in the source image to be copied onto the following image. Maybe there could be an option to toggle 're-assess dust' or somethign like that, if that's what the photographer wants to happen, but I think this feature is far more powerful if it'd allow the photographer to take a picture of a white wall or the sky, with the same aperture setting, and then 'assess the dust' in the image that's just one, light, homogenous-coloured image, and then copy the dust spots positions to the real image. In my testing, the tool finds all the dust perfectly, if it's a shot of the sky or a wall, so it could be a hugely powerful workflow for landscape photographers, or anyone who regularily shoots at f/11 or f/16 or f/22 (and has dust on their camera's sensor!) to simply take a shot of the sky or a wall, and then use that shot to clean the dust off of their 'real' shots!

[Ben W. @byfieldpitman]

[wwwanderer]

Excellent Useful.

[Karlchinnappa]

Dust removal simply doesnt work !

Removes nothing even on very obviously dust spotted images.

Using Nov 2025 release of LrC and Ps

12Gb Vid RAm

32Gb RAM

AI features enabled

[Erik Bloodaxe]

Sensor dust?

[amgreen]

Dust removal much better.  I used it on a 2013 digital image and it removed all the dust spots.