Hi All,

I've used LR's healing tool for years to remove dust spots in my TL sequences, but really only in static timelapses (I always clean my sensors before timelapse shoots, but sometimes a bit of dust gets on the sensor from internal sources). Healing dust spots has to done carefully, of course, and it's much trickier with motion control timelapses (especially if the camera is moving behind objects, as I usually try to do).

There is a new "content-aware remove" tool in LR 12. is it smart enough, along with LRT, to remove dust spots between keyframes, such that frame-to-frame is seamless? I've used a similar tool in After Effects when I've needed to, but it's a time-consuming process, and I'd be much happier using it in LR's raw workflow.

Chas

Why don't you try and tell us? :-)

This post was last modified: 2022-11-12, 23:45 by chasg. Edit Reason: added more info

because I'm being lazy (and hoping that somebody else had already done super-geek level testing of this new tool :-) But I shot a few sequences this evening, so I'll see how it works.

edit: I have a 900 frame TL with 5 dust spots. I've already removed those dust spots with the normal healing tool in LR and rendered to a 4K file, now I've replaced those fixes with the content-aware tool in LR. Syncing those new edits to all 900 shots has resulted in a new dialog box: "your edits were synced, but updating AI settings may take some time", and the estimated time is 20 minutes (on a 1st gen M1 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM, and the raws on a USB-C SSD).

I'll come back with another edit after I render this one to a movie file. Fingers crossed it's as good as the AE version of content-aware fill!

Any update?

Sorry to take so long to update.

Took a while because I needed to shoot a sequence with visible dust spots, but I always clean my sensors before every shoot, and also shoot at f/8 or wider, which meant not a lot of dust and therefore no chance to test Lightroom's healing tool. But I recently had to shoot at f/22 for a sequence, and finally had some dust spots to test (so, yay? :-)

I think that the heal tool does an excellent job, and is ideal for getting rid of dust spots in timelapses (and is a far faster method than using content aware tools in After Effects). *But you have to use it just the right way.*

Interestingly, the "wrong way" (it won't work properly) is our normal LRT and LR workflow. If you heal all the dust spots in your first keyframe, and then use Gunther's script to copy all edits to the other keyframes in a sequence, the heal tool acts very strangely. I _think_ it copies the healed pixels from that first image on to the other keyframes, instead of healing for each keyframe.

So, I think that the proper way to use the healing tool is to use it as the very last step before exporting to LRT for rendering (or AE or whatever other program you use for rendering). And the way you use it is to select _all_ of your images in Lightroom (not just keyframes), and then sync the healing from one image (using Lightroom's Sync button, not the LRT script) through all of them. Of course, you only do this step after all editing is done in LRT and LR. It takes a little while for the AI to do the job, especially if you are working with a lot of files (the sequence I tested it on was almost 2000 raws). But LR will then heal every dust spot individually on each photo, instead of copying pixels from one photo to others.

The sequence I did my tests on was clear skies, I need to shoot another one with details in the skies (like clouds with distinct edges), but I am pretty confident the tool will do the job.

That's interesting because even when having LR recalc the healing for each frame, I got really noticeable artifacts when playing back the timelapse - just because the healing is a bit different for each image, which you don't see in a single frame, but you clearly notice it on playback. I'm curious to hear, what others say!

Rats, sorry to hear that. I need to do more testing then.

Next time I go out, I'll see if I've got dust on the sensor of my Sony A7II (my least-capable camera), and I _won't_ clean it (I'd rather not blow dust _into_ my camera just for a test, ha ha). Hopefully I can test on a clouds-with-sharp-edges day (cumulous-like), so that any content-aware healing artefacts from frame to frame will be obvious. But any cumulous clouds have come with rain lately, here in London (quite frustrating), so it might take me a while.

Ok, I've got a good test sequence for dust removal tools, and, well, the Lightroom "content-aware remove" tool is, sadly, not up the the job of removing really bad dust on sensors (despite what I wrote before).

I trusted the "keep shutter closed" feature on my Sony A7IV to keep dust and stuff off the sensor, so when I changed a lens recently on location, I didn't expect a _giant_ fibre to end up on the sensor (I _did_ carefully clean the sensor before this shoot). The only positive is that it was a very good subject (difficult), for LR's content-aware remove tool to work on. Sadly, a fibre this large was too much for the tool (it's great for single images, but not for sequences).

Below is a link to a video that compares the various ways to remove unwanted fibres like this from sequences of raw images. This is a 33mpx image originally rendered to full 4K, and then I cropped it down to 720p to show just the area with the fibre. The full sequence was 700 frames, but I've cut it down to about 7 seconds at 25fps for the purposes of this comparison video. This was shot on a Laowa 15mm f/2 lens at f/22 (I forgot my step-down ring to attach my ND filters, but f/22 means the fibre is _really_ prominent; good for testing).

Comparison video:
https://vimeo.com/790763034/f4b637b3bc

1) The first segment of this video is the original footage (big fibre!)

2) Lightroom's content-aware remove tool, using default settings (I didn't choose a source). You can see, when the edges of the clouds reach the fibre, there are artefacts.
-I used it by removing the fibre on the first image, and then used Lightroom's "Sync" button to copy those edits to every other image. Lightroom showed a dialog box stating that the AI was working on all of the images.

3) Lightroom's content-aware remove tool, but this time I _did_ choose a source, just to the right of the fibre. Even _more_ artefacts!

4) Lightroom's healing tool (I chose a source to the immediate right of the fibre). Artefacts galore.

5) After Effect's content-aware tool, and this did a pretty-well perfect job. It did take about an hour to work on this 700 frame sequence, but if you want the best results, this is the way I'd go. I rendered TIFFs out of AE, and rendered those to a video file using LRT (lots of extra steps, vs. doing the fibre removal in Lightroom, but far better results).

And below are links to the full 4K versions of each of these segments, feel free to download and zoom in (of course: my copyright, so please don't re-post or send out to anyone, thanks!).

original (no edits)
https://vimeo.com/790748156/492fbf51fb

Lightroom's content-aware remove tool, using default settings
https://vimeo.com/790748063/76f2c8c515

Lightroom's content-aware remove tool, manual source
https://vimeo.com/790748095/9bf9df9501

Lightroom's healing tool
https://vimeo.com/790748116/213b3a0b53

After Effect's content-aware tool
https://vimeo.com/790748031/e059fb8d7e


Conclusion: I would not use Lightroom's content-aware remove tool on large or complex dust in timelapse sequences (sadly). I'd instead use After Effect's content-aware tool instead, despite the overhead of time required.

That said, I need to test in LR on simple dust spots against complex cloud edges, but I am reasonably confident that Lightroom's content-aware remove tool will do a good job on _small_ dust spots (but, again, I need to definitively test).

Thx for sharing!

A pleasure, it's nice to give back. I hope it's helpful! :-)