No matter how often you clean the camera and lenses, and no matter how perfect the composition is, it’s hard to avoid having a couple spots or areas you want to remove from a photo.

Luckily, it’s relatively easy to remove spots in Photoshop without leaving visible traces.

Remove Dust Spots in Photoshop

If you’re a Lightroom user and all you want to do is remove the obvious dust spots from the sky, I recommend using Lightroom’s Spot Removal Tool rather than the slightly more advanced techniques we’ll look at in Photoshop.

Lightroom’s Visualize Spot alternative makes it easy to find both dominant and less visible dust spots all over the image.

However, if you prefer to include the process of removing dust spots in your Photoshop workflow, it’s also a straightforward task that doesn’t take much time; plus, the results are normally spot on – no pun intended.

The Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool and Clone Stamp Tool are all useful for removing dust spots and either of them will do the job. Personally, I prefer to work with the Spot Healing Brush as it’s the simplest of the three but just as powerful.

Here’s my preferred way to remove dust spots in Photoshop:

  1. Create a new layer – In case you make a mistake or want to change something at a later basis, I always recommend working with separate layers – using a non-destructive workflow.
  2. Select your tool of choice – As mentioned, I prefer using the Spot Healing Brush Tool (Photoshop shortcut: J). Make sure that the brush type is Content-Aware and that you’ve selected Sample All Layers.
  3. Adjust the brush size and click on the dust spots – Removing the dust spots is pretty straightforward and all you need to do is click on the spots you want to remove. If the spot is in a detailed area you might need to make some fine adjustments by using a smaller brush along the edges.

Remove Dust Spots in Photoshop

You can also remove larger spots by brushing over them until the entire area is covered. Alternatively, if you’re removing a straight line, click once where the line begins, hold shift and click again where the line ends.

Did you enjoy this quick tip? If so, make sure to read our other Quick Tip Thursday articles!