Professional photographer Anthony Morganti of 'I Am Mr Photographer' has published a new video that shows viewers how to systematically search for sensor spots (or water droplets and other unwanted specks) in an image using Adobe Lightroom Classic. The method is very simple and relies on a few keyboard shortcuts, as Morganti explains in his video.
Using this method, Lightroom users zoom in on the image and set the zoom box to the upper left-hand side of the image. From there, Morganti simply uses his computer's Page Down function to scan through zoomed portions of the image in columns. The video includes instructions for viewers using Mac and viewers whose keyboards lack dedicated shortcut keys, among other things.
Great little hint. I;ve been dragging the image around to find spots on my scans of film photos. This procedure does it easily for you. PLus it appears there's a little overlap from one frame to the next so you won't miss anything.
There is no harm repeating a useful technique, even though some people will know it already. Anthony Morganti’s videos are full of little gems, some more obvious, others less so.
The Lightroom spot visualisation is one of the few things that in my opinion Lightroom does a lot better than Capture One, coupled with the ability to remove unlimited spots. Possibly this is related to C1’s inability to look at white and black points with a threshold type visualisation. If only C1 would add these, it would take away one of the areas that keeps me and maybe many others committed to Lightroom.
If you're testing to see whether the sensor needs cleaning, it helps if you shoot a white wall out of focus and use a long-ish exposure while wiggling the camera so that no detail other than dust specks will be recorded. Then, in LR, heavily boost contrast. Makes the dust really, really obvious. Of course, this could make you worry about dust that you'd otherwise never see.
Yeah, I found if you take a long exposure and move the camear around the spots show easily. What I need now is away to use it as a base line and remove spots automatically from all subsequent images, preferable in camera
Thanks for this. I've been using this technique with Photoshop for years and somehow never got around to trying it on Lightroom.
Let me add a couple things now that I've tried it. (on my Mac)
First, hit the Tab key and that will hide the side panels so you can use the entire screen. Second, if you use the Shift-PageDown you will scroll from side to side instead of top to bottom which is useful for mainly checking the skies. I rarely see sensor spots on the ground part of my images.
The claim in the video that these were water droplets on the lens, and not sensor spots was almost certainly wrong. These were most definitely sensor spots. Objects on the lens will always show up as blurred areas in the image, and not discrete circles. The technical reason for this is that objects or marks on the lens are so far out of the depth of field that they will be completely out of focus. The marks in this video have clear boundaries.
I think it is somewhat remiss of DPreview to highlight videos that mislead it's readers with technically inaccurate explanations.
If you see spots with clearly defined edges and shapes in your images like this, you need to clean your sensor, not your lens.
Am I the only one who would rather have photography tips, tricks, and tutorials described in words, rather than video? It's so much easier to skip through at my own pace rather than being forced to watch the entire thing just to find out that there's actually nothing new to learn after all.
Absolutely. If we're not careful, we'll become a generation of illiterate photographers. There are waaaaay too many low quality vlogs doing the rounds at the moment.
Website editors have forgotten what responsibilities come with the title 'editor'. Many now see 3rd party vlogs as a way to take the onus of them to produce content.
Younger people tend to read much lesser nowadays. video is much easier to digest for most youngsters/instagram/tiktok generation (as I see it with my own children.)
This youtuber has at least followed the 101 rule of youtube marketing: make your videos at least 3 minutes in length. All could have been explained in less than a minute.
Can't we have both? If you don't have a firm grasp on all the terminology newer photographers can become confused reading a poorly worded step by step guide, whereas seeing each step carried out in a video removes all doubt.
As I said, having the tutorial laid out in both written and video format is the best of both worlds.
Or at least tell us the second where he says the one sentence we all want to hear. Why would I spend three minutes watching a video if I could simply read one paragraph of text?
People learn differently, and especially if the process is lengthy (like it requires 10 steps) it is helpful to show someone too along with verbal instructions. Some learn by reading only, some need visuals or audio so they remember it better. I guess if you're going to pick one medium to deliver such instructions, it's better to error on the side of doing a video versus just audio or just text/written.
For this feature, yeah a sentence or two is all you need. But if you're say for example, teaching someone new to LR the Basics panel, you might want a video instead so you can show them both what the sliders are and what impact they have on your image.
It's even more effective if you have a macro lens. This is because at 1:1 or smaller, the effective aperture of the smallest aperture on your lens, will be at least 2 f-stops smaller, meaning the dust spots will be even more visible.
Attach the macro lens. Set it on your smallest aperture, focus the lens at it's closest point, aim it at an even area of illumination like a cloudy sky, light colour wall etc, using a low ISO. Your exposure will be in seconds. Just keep moving the camera around slightly for the period of the exposure for even illumination. Then do an auto levels adjust on your image, and all the marks on your sensor will be crystal clear. Prepare to be horrified. You only need to get rid of the clear marks as the rest will not show up in ordinary images.
You're missing the point. This is a tutorial on how to remove spots from an actual image so it can be salvaged or perfected. Not solely on how to detect sensor grime.
And tomorrow: a new trick that makes it easy to keep your work even when turning off your computer. The method is very simple. Using this method, users open the File menu and choose the "Save" item. The video includes instructions for advanced users who apply the trick by pressing the Ctrl-S hot key.
No, that won't work. The video instructions would be incomplete. You must then type a name for the file you want to save and then press Enter or Return. You can also change the folder it's saved to, but this is only for convenience when retrieving the file you've saved. (That technique will be covered in a future video.) Once this method is mastered, one can than leap to the next level and master the Ctrl-S keyboard shortcut trick. But that won't work for Apple users because they don't have a Ctrl key. That applies to non-Apple keyboards. But experienced Apple users will recognize the key equivalent -- the Command key -- and can use that in conjunction with the S key. I hope tomorrow's video will include these written instructions. For some people, it's better to read text than follow a lengthy video; for others, it's more comfortable to watch a video demonstration with verbal instructions. To each his own. Who am I to judge? I'm just a stupid prolix solipsist. And I've run out of char
I feel cheated. I know how to use the Spot Removal tool and the visualization option/slider as well as to how to navigate the image as shown. I was expecting an actual NEW way to visualize dust spots.
I use a trick that leverages the levels panel and individually compress each channel around the data to expose and separate the spots more easily.
Everyone knows this tip. Every LR 101 class teaches this technique so it's nothing new and pretty self explanatory. Now if only C1 could employ a similar function for detecting spots, that would be nice.
@sirhawkeye64 Not everyone reads through beginner courses. I prefer learning by playing around with the software and then if there's things I don't know how to do I will search for them.
Judging by the Youtube comment section of the video it seems like I was not the only one that didn't know this trick either.
Many people, myself included, are self taught. While I knew how to use spot removal, I never noticed the visualize spots box, or the less useful keyboard shortcut to systematically pan over the image.
How can you teach yourself something you don't know? You rely on books, tutorials, etc., to teach you. Since tutorials run the gamut in quality and usefulness, a good book will cover the most useful techniques. And if it doesn't, then it's not a good book on the subject.
@Valps Learning by using the program and whatever things I can't figure out myself I can find by Google or YouTube. Same thing with photography, I learned it by doing and not reading books about it.
It is possible to teach yourself something without reading a book or watching a video. In this case I would think "vizualize spots" is a pretty self explanatory checkbox in what it does. The slider might not as a straightforward but since LR is non-destructive, trial and error (along with undos) usually has no negative effects.
The bulk of what I learned in LR, at least, was trial and error and experimentation.
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