Dust and Scratches Filter Disappeared in Premiere Pro v 24.6.0

[boyirving]

The Dust and Scratches Filter seems to have disappeared in Premiere Pro v 24.6.0.  I use this a lot in my work.  Has it been replaced by something else?

[Carlos Ziade]

These has been moved to the Obsolete bin

[Ann Bens · Accepted solution]

Obsolete Effects, Transitions and Presets removed

[Michael260332691569]

Removed cuz we want more money so buy AE, too bad hahaha

[R Neil Haugen]

Nope, really. The "Obsolete" effects have all been in the Obsolete folder since at least 2018. Shoulda been enough warning, I'd think, though yea, I miss a couple too.

Those were mostly ancient code and weren't heavily used across the entire user base. So between the old code and (relatively few users) ... they weren't deemed worth completely rewriting, with everything else on the plate. You know, setting priorities.

[Michael260332691569]

Yeah, no, that's awfully covenient. Obsolete should mean something is replaced with something better and available for immediate use within the same purchase of the original product. Dust & Scratches were the only easy (reallllly slow sure) way to dust and clean footages and important for any editors worth a damn. Locking the alternative behind a paywall is anti-consumer. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Dust & scratches was a hard one to lose, no question there.

It was also one of the least used effects in the app, as a percentage of users. That's direct from the devs at NAB, and so ... there are other options for users, and they have far more used things that needed work.

It's not a 'nice' thing, but then, priorities decisions aren't normally 'nice', just necessary. So many of the changes I've wanted in color are similar: so few people would probably use them, that even though the devs listen and say, yea, that would be wonderful to have, and a certain subset of users would be ecstatic ... it's, bluntly,  a small subset.

Yea. 

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, most of whom are based in Resolve, with some in Baselight. Both apps have extensive internal effects for tons of things. Halation? Check! it's a very extensive set.

Yet nearly all the colorists I know ... and it's a large group, including not so known clear through some of the bigger names ... have at least one if not two complete sets of effects packages. Boris, and probably Red Giant/Maxon also.

They're paying up to or over a grand a year for added effects, often for ones that are already in Resolve or Baselight.

And editors tend to scream if they might benefit from a one-time $29 plugin. 

Personally, I do have the RedGiant Universe, the Autokroma BRAW Studio, and a number of other plugins. Plus stock music and graphics libraries. A cost of doing business.

[Warren Heaton]

@boyirving 

It can be very disappointing when an effect we use frequently is removed from an application.

Dust & Scratches is available in Adobe After Effects.  Either import the clip directly into an After Effects project or replace it in the Timeline with an After Effects Composition.  On the After Effects side, the effect is under Effects > Noise & Grain > Dust & Scratches.

It adds some extra steps and requires that you save an After Effects project file that you would not have had to do otherwise, but should yield the same end result.

[Carlos Ziade]

So this was totally removed, another option:

You can also do it once inside After Effects, and save that as a mogrt, then import to Premiere Pro,

or export it from After Effects as an overlay with alpha channel.

There are also many ready made dust and scratches overlays, you might find some on Adobe Stock.

[R Neil Haugen]

Warren and Carlos have good comments.

Personally, I'd simply open the clip in Ae, do the dust & scratches work there, and export as a new clip. Picking a decent DI format like 422 or so. Use that in Premiere as a replacement for the original, do the rest of the work there on that clip.

But we all work differently, which is a very fascinating and actually very useful thing. There's always someone with another way to do something you can learn from.

[ProLightMedia]

It's completely gone in Premiere Pro 2025. Removing a feature without offering a new one in its place is unacceptable. I don't know why they thought it necessary when nearly every video professional has dealt with a sensor spot at some point in their career. This is just another case of Adobe making "progress" at the customer's expense. 

[R Neil Haugen]

As has been commented on for seven years now ... those effects were used by under 1% of the user base.

So they were all things that were only, very rarely, used. Most of all had another, better, more modern designed replacement. Which is the case for dust & scratches, as the Ae version is vastly more capable. And pretty quick and easy to use.

So why keep ancient code that wasn't GPU accelerated and could cause other effects to drop from GPU acceleration also?

I wish they'd updated a couple myself, naturally. However I do understand the decision. 

[ProLightMedia]

It just feels like Premiere pro is built off "old code" If you've ever worked in resolve, you'd find out how much you are missing in terms of functionality. Now the only reason I use premiere is dynamic link and text based editing. Which I'll give it to them is pretty cool. But everything else just sucks. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Um ... I teach use of Resolve ... I've worked in that app for over a decade. Because? I work for/with/teach pro colorists.

Premiere's code has been continually rebuilt. Which is why so many users with older kit have struggles with 24.x and really hard times with 25.x ... so much new code they don't really run well on previous hardware. So empirically, your assumption seems invalid.

As to 'functionality' in Resolve ... I disagree. The color capabilities are naturally extensive, as that app started as a $250,000 per seat app. As still perhaps the most widely used grading app, yep, color is a priority. And for deliverable creation, it also has a far better output setup than Premiere.

Past that? Nope. I don't think Resolve is quite "there" yet as an editing thing. Getting closer, but so many things easily done in Premiere aren't yet in Resolve. Keyboard shortcuts and other things just more extensive for editing in Premiere.

And Resolve's locked-down UI and having so many buried menus all over the app bother me. After all this time, I still have to work to remember where you go to change the setting for X so often.

Everyone's mileage always varies. Assume you are different in everything you do off the bat. Because, realistically, you are. Which is to me the most fascinating thing in video post. How differently we all work.

[Dpmatlosz]

Wow premier is just pushing us more and more to Resolve.  Seems 'they' decide on their own what we should and shouldn't have and use.  Sure maybe I use dust and scratches maybe once or twice per year, but for the love of pete, forcing us to offload to After FX then back again for a simple dust fix is redic on every level.  It's such a drag there are way too many bored programers jacking with perfectly good programs to justify whatever it is they justify.  There is a quote my father taught me long ago, "If it Ain't broke don't fix it!"  Perhaps at some point in time app leadership will learn this mantra, until then, we get good things taken away due to a few bad actors.

[Dpmatlosz]

What makes it even more redic that adobe would remove Dust and Scratches is that they kept:  Turbulent Displace, Twirl, And all the lame VR applications...  One step closer to Davinci

[R Neil Haugen]

You and I will never use the VR things ... no reason to.

However, though we don't find them useful, there are many others that do. By the use, clearly a lot more than used D&S effect any more, as odd as that seems to us. Most users never deal with media that needs "cleaning".

Ah well.

[Dpmatlosz]

Yeah but they still have Turbulent displace and Twirl to name a few lame plug ins.  They also removed the Wraptor DCP plug in a while ago.  As I stated I hardly use dust and scratches, but in those times when I do, for 200 frames or so, I'd prefer to not go into After FX and back.  But and again...they are pushing more and more people to Davinci.  Too many programmers who don't do what we do.

[R Neil Haugen]

We're all different. One person's lame is another's go-to . Although I often wonder about some people.... 😉

It's hard to figure out, but I've had devs at times tell me a very highly requested effect and ... just wonder what the hay. Yup, we are all different for sure. Amazingly so at times.

[Warren Heaton]

@Dpmatlosz 

I use Turbulent Displace quite a bit, but on the After Effects side.  One of its more common uses is to introduce wiggle (or boil) to what’s meant to look like a hand-drawn animation that was done on paper and then shot with a camera two frames at time.

A way to keep using Dust and Scratches is to apply it to an Adjustment Layer in a Sequence in Premiere Pro 23.x, save that project, and then open it in Premiere Pro 25.x (or import it) and then use Copy and Paste Attributes to apply it in Premiere Pro 25.x.  This should work for any of the obsolete effects.

If you need to apply Dust and Scratches frequently, I’d check out the trial version of NeatVideo.  It’s a one-time purchase, but the results are excellent.

As far as Wraptor DCP goes, I’ve switched to DCP-o-matic (free); however, that’s not due to the lite version of Wraptor no longer being available in the Apple Silicon version of Premiere Pro.  I have recent film festival submission guidelines that explicitly state not to use Wraptor DCP.

It is challenging to have to change how we’ve been doing things, though, especially if we’re happy with the way it worked.

On the plus side, have you had a chance to check out Film Impact?  Now that Film Impact is part of Adobe, the effects and transitions are available for anyone using older versions of Premiere Pro (I believe it goes back to 14.x or 2020) as well as the current version.  Film Impact installs with Premiere Pro 25.5 if we’re running that.

[Dpmatlosz]

Thanks for the thoughtful response:  

I generally avoid exporting to After FX, honestly, I hardly ever use it, the learning curve is a 90 angle.  

I do have a copy of Premier 23 on my laptop, luckily, it saved me hours of work retaining it...phew.

I have only used dust and scratches two twice in 18 months.  it seems like a simple enough application., I cant image its clogging the pipeline.  And more and more with these shutterless digital cameras, the sensors seem to be magnest for random dust.  Maybe Adobe will bring it back and better...LOL

I have also used DCP-O Matic.  it works great with any exported video including that from Resolve...wink wink adobe. 

Changes in software that seem backwards are redic.  Latest with Apple, you cannot organize system settings alphanumeric.  So the list of options looks more like an ADHD nightmare.  

Lastly What is film impact?  I mean I can google it, but maybe the peanut gallery is curious too.  

Thanks

Jimmy

[R Neil Haugen]

FilmImpact has been a separate plugin creator for video and audio transitions, and was purchased last week by Adobe, and immediately incorporated into Premiere.

Although you can get to the FilmImpact effects/transitions via the Effects panel, it is probably easier to go to Premiere's Window/Extensions menu option, and select Film Impact, which launches that extension's panel.

It includes all their transitions with examples of what each does. It is for many quite a welcomed addition.

And you're right about digital sensors. When our portrait studio first went digital back in 2002, dust/specs were a constant issue and we were cleaning those sensors every couple weeks. Since then, somehow, things don't stick nearly like what they used to, apparently the sensors are either coated better or less electrically attracted to dust/gunk.

Shifting into video production a decade back, there was still some cleaning I had to do. But I haven't needed to clean a sensor in the last three months or so, and I'm a picky sot. I don't think most users would have even noticed what I needed to clean.

The dust/scratches was generally assuming film with dust scratches, and so was used more in years gone by. As you comment though, a lot of DPs or other camera operators out there at this time never seem to even think about checking a sensor or cleaning it ... and yea, they can produce images that need image cleaning effects.

So maybe we'll get a rebuilt effect for digital sensor use ... ? I would hope so. Most sincerely.

[Dpmatlosz]

Thanks for engaging:

I can't imagine I'd be using Film Impact much, I think I use Film Dissolve 90% of the time.  It's just my style.  

I've noticed the dust issues have increased exponentially with shutterless digital.  I have cleaned sensors thoroughly and double checked, only to find an issue in dailies later.  It's a serious W_F!  The other day I spent a good 2 hours cleaning my sensor for a doc shoot, luckily the dirt remained at bay.  Note: I was an AC for 15 years, pro DP for another 20. I am very thorough...  Yes perhaps there will be a newer plug in focused on digital sensors, I mean they've only been around for 20 + years...   More recently one of my clients, stated he fired both photographer and drone op due to dirty stills and video, apparently they viewed cleaning their sensors, lenses and footage as someone elses job.  Ah the lessons we learn