How to find dust spots in Lightroom?

[SamThomas27]

Hello Everyone!

First time posting on Jetphotos Forum so I hope I'm doing this correctly. I was curious how you all locate your dust spots in Adobe Photoshop. I know that you are able to fix them with the healing brush but I just don't know how I am supposed to see them while editing. I have tried messing with levels and curves but nothing is as good as the jetphotos dust tool and I wanted to know how to replicate that in photoshop. Thank you for your help!

[LewisW295]

Well your title says Lightroom and your post says Photoshop so I'm a tad confused. Anyway, for Lightroom....

1. Enter Develop mode
2. Press Q or select Spot Tool
3. Press A or select "Visualize spots" located underneath the image.
4. Use the intensity slider to find abnormalities.
5. Use the mousewheel to scroll the brush size to the same size as your spot
6. Click the spot once you've centered the brush over the spot.
7. Come out of the visualise mode and check the result.

My tip, do a rough crop first. I have a prominent dust spot on the very top of my sensor but 99% of my images will crop it out. Also, flick back and fore between the visualise mode and normal mode. This will help you distinguish if you are about to eliminate an Evil Dust Spot or an innocent bird.

[mplace]

If you are doing it through Lightroom, I find the "Visual Spots" feature kind of difficult to find dust spots in my photos. Before I start editing my photos, I identify my spots by increasing the clarity and the dehaze feature to +100 and adjusting the exposure to find any spots in my frame. Then, I use the Lewis's process above with the spot tool to remove any spots I see without using the third step in his process. Once I believe I have taken care of all of the dust spots, I reset my tone, and then I begin my editing process.

Hope this helps!

[JamesDC152]

Same as above, but I also do the following
I reduce the blue colours to -100, that helps me find spots easier than in normal colours
dehaze to very high
clarity to very high
texture to very high

This helps the spots become more identifiable.
Add exposure as well if you struggle to see
Then reverse everything back to normal