Speedy Dust Spot Removal In Lightroom
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Everybody who owns an interchangeable lens camera will at some time succumb to the dreaded dust bunnies, be they dust spots or condensation marks they show up in your latest masterpiece as a darkened spot usually seen best in the sky of a photo and when you share your photo on social media followers will delight in letting you know that your photo has the dreaded dust bunnies. Worst still if you print the photo and then discover there are dust bunnies showing in the print it can becomes a costly mistake.
So how do you get rid of them, well you zap them in your upmarket photo editor of course Photoshop has its own tool for this job and if you don't have Photoshop there is Lightroom a vastly underrated photo editor. Why is Lightroom so good, well you don't have to be a genius and remember 100001 different processes.
Like Photoshop Lightroom has its own spot removal tool, plus Lightroom also has another trick up its sleeve to help find those hard to see dust bunnies. Most people know about the spot removal tool but a lot fail to see the "show dust spot" check box at the bottom left of the window. Even fewer know the shortcut keys that speed things up.
Take the photo below a sunset in a marina with some nice reflections in the water, there is also some distracting debris floating on the water
So how do you get rid of them, well you zap them in your upmarket photo editor of course Photoshop has its own tool for this job and if you don't have Photoshop there is Lightroom a vastly underrated photo editor. Why is Lightroom so good, well you don't have to be a genius and remember 100001 different processes.
Like Photoshop Lightroom has its own spot removal tool, plus Lightroom also has another trick up its sleeve to help find those hard to see dust bunnies. Most people know about the spot removal tool but a lot fail to see the "show dust spot" check box at the bottom left of the window. Even fewer know the shortcut keys that speed things up.
Take the photo below a sunset in a marina with some nice reflections in the water, there is also some distracting debris floating on the water
When you magnify the photo in Lightroom you see some dust bunnies in the top left of the photo as seen in the photo below. Have a look How many do you see?
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Well there are two which jump out at you but there are others that you can't spot so easily.
Have a look at the same magnified photo with "show dust spots" enabled in Lighroom.
Have a look at the same magnified photo with "show dust spots" enabled in Lighroom.
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Suddenly the two dust bunnies have become four with two very faint spots showing which are almost invisible to the naked eye. Once you can see them they are easy to zap and remove.
The quickest way to remove the spots is a two handed approach, right hand on the mouse left hand using the short cut keys, but first we need to set up the spot removal tool by adjusting the opacity and feather which normally once set can be left the same for all photos.
The spot removal tool can be found in the develop module between the crop and red eye tools it is a circle with a small arrow on the right side and when we click on it the settings are revealed below it. see photo below
The quickest way to remove the spots is a two handed approach, right hand on the mouse left hand using the short cut keys, but first we need to set up the spot removal tool by adjusting the opacity and feather which normally once set can be left the same for all photos.
The spot removal tool can be found in the develop module between the crop and red eye tools it is a circle with a small arrow on the right side and when we click on it the settings are revealed below it. see photo below
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First we click on heal to select it. Next adjust the opacity slider, this needs to be high enough so that we cover the dust spot but not at 100 because it will leave a hard edge around the repair 90 should be OK for most situations. Finally we adjust the Feather to soften the edge of the repair 15 should be OK. The size of the tool we can adjust using the scroll wheel on the top of your mouse making it bigger or smaller to fit over the dust bunny.
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To use the tool we start in a top corner of your photo by clicking on that part of the photo to magnify it then drag the photo with the mouse so you can see the top edge and left edge of the photo.
We use shortcut keys to enable the spot removal tool and show dust spots. So with caps lock off hit "Q" on the keyboard which will activate the spot removal tool then hit "A" this activates the show dust spots screen which will be black and white the dust spots look like little doughnuts (If caps lock is on then hitting "A" on the keyboard will do nothing so make sure caps lock is set to off).
Hover the tool over the dust spot with your mouse and adjust the size of the tool by rotating the mouse wheel, when you have the spot enclosed within the tool click once with the left mouse button and presto the dust spot is gone. Repeat on other dust spots you can see. Finally hit "Q" on the keyboard to turn off the tool and show dust spot screen.
This is so you can drag the photo over to do the next section. Hitting "Q" and "A" again to activate the dust removal tool and show dust spot screen. Repeat again and again for all sections of your photo. You will find that because the two shortcut keys are next to each other turning them off and on is quick and easy with one hand while you zap the dust bunnies using the mouse in your other hand.
If you are not sure if something is a dust bunny you can quickly revert back to a normal colour screen by hitting the "A" button hitting "Q" will turn off both the dust removal tool and show dust spots screen.
The healing tool can also be use to remove the debris floating on the surface of water in my photo and small birds in the sky
This method is my preferred way of removing dust bunnies because it gets the dust spots that are impossible to see with the naked eye and once you get used to the shortcut keys it becomes a really quick method.
We use shortcut keys to enable the spot removal tool and show dust spots. So with caps lock off hit "Q" on the keyboard which will activate the spot removal tool then hit "A" this activates the show dust spots screen which will be black and white the dust spots look like little doughnuts (If caps lock is on then hitting "A" on the keyboard will do nothing so make sure caps lock is set to off).
Hover the tool over the dust spot with your mouse and adjust the size of the tool by rotating the mouse wheel, when you have the spot enclosed within the tool click once with the left mouse button and presto the dust spot is gone. Repeat on other dust spots you can see. Finally hit "Q" on the keyboard to turn off the tool and show dust spot screen.
This is so you can drag the photo over to do the next section. Hitting "Q" and "A" again to activate the dust removal tool and show dust spot screen. Repeat again and again for all sections of your photo. You will find that because the two shortcut keys are next to each other turning them off and on is quick and easy with one hand while you zap the dust bunnies using the mouse in your other hand.
If you are not sure if something is a dust bunny you can quickly revert back to a normal colour screen by hitting the "A" button hitting "Q" will turn off both the dust removal tool and show dust spots screen.
The healing tool can also be use to remove the debris floating on the surface of water in my photo and small birds in the sky
This method is my preferred way of removing dust bunnies because it gets the dust spots that are impossible to see with the naked eye and once you get used to the shortcut keys it becomes a really quick method.
