How to Easily Remove Dust From an Image

Removing dust from an image can be a time consuming and tedious task, but with some of the Photoshop tools the process can be much easier and efficient. In this tutorial, we will explore some simple steps to help you remove dust from an image in Photoshop quickly and easily whether you're dealing with old scanned photos, digital images with visible dust or simply want to clean up a shot for a professional look. To help you remove dust from your images, you have a few tools that you can use like the Spot Healing Brush or the Clone Stamp Tool but there is a quick and easy way to achieve the same results, so today I will show you how you can remove dust from any image in less than a minute by using the powerful Dust & Scratches filter and a simple layer mask.

Step 1

Open your image in Photoshop.

Step 2

Press "Ctrl+J" on your keyboard to make a copy of the image.

Step 3

With the copied layer selected, go to Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches.

Step 4

Start by setting a proper Radius for your particular image. Aim to blur all the possible dust you can without loosing too much detail. In this case, a Radius of 15 pixels will work just fine.

Step 5

Next, set the Threshold levels to get back some of the details and click OK in the Dust & Scratches window. In this image, a value of 40 seems to work just fine.

Step 6

Go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.

Step 7

Set the Foreground color to white.

Step 8

Select the Brush Tool (B) and pick a soft round brush in the top toolbar.

Step 9

Lastly, be sure to have the Layer Mask selected in the Layers Panel and paint over the part of your image that you want to remove the dust.