At Grandma’s House (23 of 366)

At Grandma's House

2016 Photo a Day, 23 of 366: At Grandma’s House

Birch trees standing at the edge of a forest and snow covered field in Central Wisconsin.

While developing this photo, I notice a few dust spots in the field of snow.  I’ve developed a quick way to identify dust spots within photos thanks the the Dehaze feature that was added in recent versions of Lightroom.  By simply moving the Dehaze setting to 100, all the dust spots within a light area of a photo will pop right out for you.  Works great for both snow and sky as you can see in the screen shots below.  After a quick round of dust removal using the Spot Removal tool, just move the Dehaze setting back to Zero and you’re done.

Screenshot of Lightroom with Dehaze set to Zero.

Screenshot of Lightroom with Dehaze set to Zero

Lightroom Dehaze Reveals Dust Spots

Screenshot of Lightroom with Dehaze set to 100 to  reveal dust spots in snow

Lightroom Dehaze Reveals Dust Spots in Sky

Screenshot of Lightroom with Dehaze set to 100 to reveal dust spots in sky

Update 1/24/2016: Another dust cleanup trick, something that has been part of Lightroom for years now that many still don’t know about, is the use of page down.  If you zoom into a photo and then drag the active view to the upper left corner of the photo as you hit page down (or Fn+Down Arrow on Mac) Lightroom will move the viewing area down with a bit of overlap from the last spot.  When you reach the bottom of the photo pressing page down again will take you over to the right one viewing area (again with some overlap between columns) and to the top of the photo again.  This is the quickest and easiest way to pan through an entire photo looking for dust spots and be sure that you don’t miss any areas.

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