Has anyone successfully set up an auto dust removal routine? I’m thinking about using a photoshop plugin with a script that opens the file runs the cleanup and resaves it.
What Photoshop plug-in are you thinking of using? I would be careful about automating this task when scanning or photographing film, especially colour negative film. None of these clean-up apps are actually made for cleaning-up dust and scratches on film with the possible exception of SilverFast’s sRDX, but even that one requires great care in usage. The problem is that these apps often mistake image detail for dust or scratches, and also fail to remove some of what actually is dust or scratches. I have consistently found that the most reliable way of cleaning up film for scanning or photographing purposes is to actually clean it - with lint-free cloth and/or film cleaner for stubborn debris. Then blow it with a strong blower brush. Very little remain, which you can quickly eliminate with the “remove” tool in Lightroom.
Hi Mark, thanks for the thoughtful response. I have tried SilverFast and it does a good general purpose cleaning. As you say, it can’t get the difficult spots like if a piece of dust falls on a seam. And the results can get a little smudgy if you know what I mean.
You are also right that if I just got around to building the film drying cabinet instead of hanging in the bathroom and did a more thorough job cleaning that would get 99% of it. I have the Ilford Anti-static cloths, the orange ones. But I have always been wary of scratching the emulsion with a stray bit of debris that I don’t notice.
True - I should have mentioned, it’s a good idea to use the blower on the film before wiping it for exactly the reason you say.
Hey you all. I was about to post to the editing forum but saw this post and figured I’d reply here first. I’ve fought with dust for ages no matter how I have scanned images. Digital camera scanning, a Frontier, Noritsu, flatbed.
I made an app to try to automate as much of it as is possible and you all may find it helpful.
It’s called Spot Tone. The automated bit is Detect and Repair, and then there’s a bunch of hand tools for everything else. Brush, Clone Stamp, Dust Lasso (great for the little stuff that is hard for the model to see but easier for our eyeballs to see), etc etc.
I’ve been working on it for a few months but it just came out of beta.
Anyway, it’s at https://spottoneapp.com/ if you want to check it out. Hopefully it’s helpful.
Cheers
cary
Dust spotting is the slowest part of my camera-scanning workflow, and Lightroom’s new Dust Removal skips film scans. So I built DustSol, a Lightroom Classic plug-in that runs after your NLP conversion.
- Finds dust, hairs and scratches with a model trained on film damage.
- Shows every mark before anything changes. Click a mark to keep it.
- Repairs keep the grain. The result is a new 16-bit TIFF stacked on your original.
- Works on negatives and slides in one batch, and runs on your Mac.
It’s a free beta for Apple silicon Macs (macOS 14+): https://dustsol.pages.dev
It isn’t perfect yet. Faint dust on busy textures can be missed, which is why you review every mark. I’d really like to see scans where it gets things wrong. That feedback trains the next version.
Not affiliated with Negative Lab Pro or Adobe. It’s meant to work alongside NLP, not replace it.
Automatic dust removal would be a really useful feature, especially when scanning a large batch of negatives. In the meantime, keeping the film and scanner clean before scanning can help reduce spots, and checking the results at 100% makes it easier to catch anything that needs manual cleanup. Hopefully this feature gets more attention in future updates!