Image Dust Removal Mask

[Microscopia]

Has anyone thought about a decent dust reference mask to remove those obstinate dust bunnies from photos. I wonder if the LR Team could incorporate such a mask for use with user input reference photos to remove, or at least minimize the effects of A-A Filter Sensor dust. This feature would certainly help speed-up workflow, especially if it could be incorporated as a user preset for imported raw images.

 

[Braders]

yes yes yes

and again please, yes.

this would be very cool. having the ability to remove, sometimes, 1''s of sensor spots would be great.

Have you submitted it as a feature request?

 

[Denis de Gannes]

IMO this should be a feature request to your camera manufacturer. Have an effective dust removal system for their cameras or use one that provides that feature.
Do they provide this with their own raw processing software?

 

[Brad Snyder]

To a certain extent, you can synch the spot remvoval tool across multiple photos. Of course, it's only effective at the identical crop/framing.

Worth asking for, though. Like Denis, I'm not sure if it's a LR function or a camera function.

 

[Sean McCormack]

Crop makes no difference to the syncing of Spoting Brad (or at least it shouldn't).
The issue for me with sync is that the auto hunt fails on edges. I'm not sure the hunting is 1''% accurate away from main image.

As to the original request, you could always shoot a white wall/open sky at f22 and use exposure/blacks to emphasise the dust, then dust and sync. You'll still need to manually move some of the spots.

Of course dust bunnies move about from air movement with mirror slap, so intial shots may have different dust locations to final ones in a shoot.

 

[Microscopia]

IMO this should be a feature request to your camera manufacturer. Have an effective dust removal system for their cameras or use one that provides that feature.
Do they provide this with their own raw processing software?

Denis - I, like many other users of LR have migrated away from the camera manufacturer's raw processing software, to LR's more straightforward and friendly interface which provides both a decent image processing and management package (nearly).

Speaking as a user of Nikon gear - they do enable 'dust off' reference photos to be taken from the camera menu which is then processed with their CaptureNX software. Having to use CaptureNX would however defeat the purpose of having LR.

Reference the camera manufacturers producing better dust removal systems. They have tried anti-statics, vibrations, and now the latest ducted shutter airflow system!!. IMO none of these will shift the 'stuck bunnies'. So apart from the continued use of expensive cleaning swabs and chemicals we are left with cloning out the marks in LR.

I agree with Sean, that some of the dust bunnies will move around with mirror slap and the telescoping effect of the lens system, but some of these are easily moved with a decent blower. I was thinking more of LR cloning out those obstinate ones that would otherwise require swab cleaning.

 

[Denis de Gannes]

Lawrence, I totally agree with what you have stated but the real solution lies with the camera manufacturer providing you with equipment that addresses this problem. If the pros and other users put pressure on them they would find a solution quickly. I do not have any problem now with the equipment I use.
However I am interested in some of the newer Nikon & Canon dslr's but not at the expense of the need for regular sensor cleaning or cloning out dust spots.

 

[Microscopia]

I suppose that is one of the advantages of using either a film camera or digital bridge camera!

A feature request has now been submitted.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Crop makes no difference to the syncing of Spoting Brad (or at least it shouldn't).

Wow, I didn't realize that. So heal/clone spotting is relative to the full frame? Yeah, I guess it would be, the crop/rotate is just metadata too.

I'll go experiment some more. And I've got just the pictures to do it with. Some blue skies accidently at f/22 (oops). You can see every atom of dust.

 

[Denis Pagé]

Has anyone thought about a decent dust reference mask to remove those obstinate dust bunnies from photos. I wonder if the LR Team could incorporate such a mask for use with user input reference photos to remove, or at least minimize the effects of A-A Filter Sensor dust. This feature would certainly help speed-up workflow, especially if it could be incorporated as a user preset for imported raw images.

A few months ago, I came across THIS from Dave Cross that may be of help. You could probably turn this into a preset...

 

[Microscopia]

Thanks for the link Denis. It appears similar to Brad & Seans' idea. Hopefully it should work, since the spots tend to be more noticeable in areas of uniform colour, so mis-cloning will only be a problem where the spots are adjacent to other objects and the selection is from the wrong side. I will give it a try!
A true 'dust-off' type reference photo and mask would however provide a more accurate result.

 

[Andrew Hayton]

If you have a lot of dust bunnies then surely a good sensor clean is needed

 

[Brad Snyder]

And with my brand new Leopard 1'.5.2 Time Machine, I'll just pop back and clean the sensor, right before I took these pictures.

Whaadya' mean it doesn't work that way? They promised me a time machine and I want it yesterday (get it?) ...:cheesy:

Seriously tho', sometimes you couldn't or didn't clean, and effective post processing is the last resort.

 

[Andrew Hayton]

I know that we don't clean our sensors as much as we should but I bet there are a lot of users that have never cleaned their sensor. It shouldn't be up to LR to be able to fix a whole years worth of images. Yes it needs to have a good way of getting rid of them but shouldn't be relied on.

 

[Microscopia]

I know that we don't clean our sensors as much as we should but I bet there are a lot of users that have never cleaned their sensor. It shouldn't be up to LR to be able to fix a whole years worth of images. Yes it needs to have a good way of getting rid of them but shouldn't be relied on.

Andrew,
A bit of an exaggeration that! No one has suggested that LR be able to fix a whole years worth of images.

Irrespective of whether you clean the A-A sensor filter prior to every shoot, you will more than likely still end up with those dust bunnies, especially if you swap lenses in the field. The marks will not be visible until after the shoot, but will certainly show up if you are into full depth of field landscape photography. Post processing will be the only option available. How do you get rid of yours?

 

[Andrew Hayton]

Lawrence,

I know I was exaggerating.

I get rid of mine with the clone/heal tool and select from areas around the dust bunny, but I only do it on images that need it and not all.

Andrew