P: Lightroom/Camera Raw: Automatic scratch and dust removal

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Many DSLRs have the capability to produce reference photos that can be used to remove sensor dust. For example, Nikon.

In addition, good film scanners have an infrared channel (Digital Ice) that programs like Vuescan can save as a separate grayscale image showing where all the dust and scratches are.

It would be simplify the workflow, and possibly improve results (if done right) if Photoshop/ACR/LR could make use of the DSLR reference photo or the Vuescan Infrared image to remove dust and scratches automatically.

[areohbee]

Good idea, since having a white background in the reference photo allows the code to isolate only the affected pixels.

You may also be interested in this idea to better handle the case with no reference photo:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Rob, if I understand it right, your other idea requires you to first identify all of the dust spots (which I suppose it would be best to do with a reference photo against a white background), remove them with the dust removal tool and then sync the changes to the other photos. I agree with you that would be quite a chore for a number of reasons, not least of which is the one you mentioned.

I wonder whether there are any third party RAW converters that do this automatically.

For the slide scanners, I am aware of only one program that can make use of the infrared info AFTER the scan is complete--VUESCAN from Hamrick Software--all of the others (Digital ICE/ Canon FARE) do it at the time of scanning only forcing you to commit to the level of removal you want.

[areohbee]

See comment in other thread (if you haven't already): http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

There are many post to this idea but adobe is sleeping - good morning!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Removing dust spots from photos is the most delirium inducing task photographers have to do. From a programmer's perspective, the dust spots are quite uniform in size and color, they have a faint distinguishable edge, and there should be no problem writing a function to identify them all on the photo, remove, and then allow the removal to be applied to all the photos in the batch. Job done!

[Guest]

Hi, please consider an automatic dust spot removal tool. We can visualisize the spots but we have to apply the healing brush on each spot separately. I think an automation of this tool would save a lot time in postproduction! But please with the ability to re-edit the automatic selection.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I don't see the means to easily remove dust specks from scanned photographs in Lightroom 5 beta. Please consider adding this feature to the future release.

[Hakanu5]

I recently did a lot of product macro photography. Here I usually have some dust left on mirroring surfaces. So it is part of a workflow, where I have annoyingly switch to Photoshop and back to Lightroom.

- I have to work on the dust as one of the final steps, because first I have to fix the exposure and all lights before I see where I have to remove durst and where i is not visible.
- If I later find some issues with the lighting and adjust them in Lightroom, I have to do all the dust removing work in Photoshop again.

Therefore I suggest a new "Effect" in Lightroom which is basically the "Remove Dust&Scratches" filter from Photoshop. It is important that this filter can be combined with masks, because of the resulting blur, I only want to apply it on flat surfaces where the blur is not visible.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I want to suggest an automatic dust removing feature for your programs.

The idea is simple:
1) scan the same photo twice with rotating it (in scanner) by 180° second time, or simply with moving it a little;
2) align image contours of those two scans;
3) combine scans using darker pixels of two images.

This will eliminate white spots on scanned images made by dust.
The result will look like this:


As you can see, almost all dust has vanished, without losing details.

The images should be aligned in a same way as Photomerge does with panoramas, but please note that images will not match in all areas, because of roughness of paper or irregularity of scanner's movements.
Therefore, contours should be aligned in several areas of image independently.

Also please note that I have suggested this feature to other companies as well, for free of course.
And thank you for quality programs.

[naestyoh]

This is part of my long-time push for more AI - automation:

LR can already run a kernal across the image for line/spot detection which leaves the removal process up to me. How about LR auto-removing spots or auto adding the spots which can be individually deleted as needed when the correction doesn't work perfectly?

A slider would be useful to indicate how large or how prominent of a spot to remove. Would also probably have to use some form of object identification so it doesn't remove birds or other objects that aren't spots. Could probably feed the aperture/lens info into the model so it could better understand what a "spot" would be in this image. For example, using a macro at F/40 means the spots would be pinpoints and pretty well defined whereas the same lens used at F/2.8 would be pretty faint, wide spots.

#MakeLightroomSmart2020

[naestyoh]

Should not have been merged. I'm asking for something quite different.

[OutDamnSpot]

While I like automation and notice a little grumpiness among some comments, I think Adobe appears  a little slow because it is a genuinely difficult problem, and even more than one problem, with at least three communities: digital image improvers, battered slide repairers, battered photo repairers. 

I mostly use the spot healing brush in Photoshop, and its success rate is well over 99 percent, often producing magical results.  But it does also have a few torments: It often replaces scratches with two parallel lines, one either side of where the scratch was, and sometimes, just with a segment from a bit further along the scratch.  It often replaces a spot with pixels containing a similar spot and the two spots just alternate as I try to eliminate them.  In this case, I draw a line joining them.  Amusingly, it occasionally replaces the subject of my image with more of the blemish I'm trying to remove. 

I'm sure an automated solution exists, but meanwhile, I'd be pleased to see improvements to the spot healing tool, possibly in the form of an extra button to tell it when I'm healing a scratch not a spot, so it can use a different algorithm. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

this issue is over ten years old. how can Canon already do it with "canon dust delete data" and you don't even dream about it?

adobe, you are a dinosaur in photography field.

it's only a matter of time until some startup will make use of open source AI libraries and write some wonderful code to do all this. 

[emmanuels76128025]

Hello

As many analogic photographer i use lightroom to take off the dust from the negatives.

We have to spend hours to remove one by one the dust point using the spot view.

Would it be possible to make this process automatic ? We could use a slider to choose the sensitivity (the same than dust view) and we could correct after the corrections proposed by lightroom classic.

Thanks in advance.

[Per Berntsen]

The spot removal tool is designed to remove sensor dust from digital images. It doesn't work well with scanned negatives, where there may be hundreds or even thousands of dust spots, which will slow Lightroom down to a crawl. Besides, you'll end up with overlays on top of each other, making retouching very difficult.

I always do spot removal on negative scans in Photoshop before importing to Lightroom.

It's much easier than in Lightroom, and ten times faster.

I use the Spot healing brush most of the time, and sometimes the Clone stamp.

[dudleyr4907676]

Until recently I have not worried too much about dust spot removal, but recently my Canon 6D II developed spots under the low pass filter. I can't find much information about how or why this would happen, but the short of it is that the sensor would have to be replaced to eliminate them--several hundred dollars. Short of that, to use the camera I need to shoot at f/8 or lower, or tediously remove the spots in Lightroom. The spot removal tool isn't bad, and the 'visualize spots' function helps quite a bit, and I understand about syncing the spot removals across a bunch of images. Nonetheless, it is a less than perfect solution in this day and age. There is at least one vendor scheduled to release software that will remove spots automatically via AI. But I would rather be able to be able to do something that automatic in Lightroom Classic. I have an idea:
What about Something like Canon's dust delete data?
Canon has a feature in most of its cameras that allows you to acquire a "photo" against a white background that maps the dust spots on the sensor and then appends that data to images shot thereafter. It only works with Canon cameras, of course, and only with their DPP photo processing software. I've used it and not found it overly accurate. But ...
What if Adobe developers created something that allowed us to take a shot (High f/stop, shot at a white background close to the camera, distance at infinity), which would show just dust spots, and then in Lightroom designate the image as a "dust reference shot," and then use it to map spots in a set of selected images, and have the software remove the spots automatically. It wouldn't require AI to identify the spots. The reference photo could be updated at any point (before a shoot or even during one). Surely with the identification of spots taken care of Adobe engineers could easily figure out a way to perform automatic context-aware or AI removal of the dust spots in the images. Just a thought."

[GoldingD]

The existing semi automatic way:

Automatically Remove Dust Spots using Lightroom: Exploring Photograph with Mark Wallace

[dudleyr4907676]

Thanks. I've been using this. I'd still love something that identified the spots to begin with.

[Da7]

@GoldingD 

that technique is not that useful as different scenes have different areas where you need to remove the dust.

It could be great if AI could be implemented in the Spot Removal Tool. The powder appears as small donuts and this means that the AI could easily recognize them. I'm actually working on hundreds of old photos affected by heavy dust. Every single photo has different needs since the sky (where the dust is most visible) always occupies different portions of the frame.

It is really frustrating to remove dust on every photo as any kind of syncing does not give acceptable results.

Please consider some kind of dust removal automation. LRC is now able to isolate subjects and skies ... I think it can also be done for circular dust.