How can I remove or prevent white spots caused by shooting toward the sun?

Asked 8/23/2018

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When I shoot with a wide-angle lens toward bright sunlight, I get many small shiny white spots in the image. They look like well-defined bright specks rather than broad flare. Is there a better way to remove or reduce them than cloning each one manually in Lightroom? Also, is this something I can prevent when shooting?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

2 Answers

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Have you already checked your lens and sensor for dust? If not, don't clean them yet. If the problem is caused by dust, you may be able to use a photograph of the specks as a mask to guide their removal in your existing images. Also do not use any automated dust removal feature built into your camera until after you get a clean shot of the dust that you are able to successfully use to post process your existing images.

If the specks are fairly consistent across images, but you've already cleaned your lens and sensor, you can reuse a mask that you manually create for one image.

If the specks are moving around, they may still be caused by dust on your sensor. If your camera has in-body image stabilization, the sensels won't map directly to image pixels. This would make post processing the images more troublesome because you'd likely have to manually align the mask. (See How can I automatically digitally remove shifting sensor dust speckles from a large series of photos?)


Unfortunately, most automated ways of removing specks like these will degrade image quality. If the specks are limited to the sky, it is fairly straightforward to limit noise-reduction to desired areas with a layer mask.

The most time efficient way of dealing with these images would be to use them at reduced size, where the defect simply isn't visible. (Basically, ignoring the problem.) You can spend more time removing specks from only the images you really want to enlarge.

Originally by user75526. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user75526

7y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

These spots are likely not normal lens flare, but dust-related artifacts—most often dust on or near the sensor. Dust spots become more visible when shooting into strong light and at smaller apertures.

What to do:

  • Check whether the spots stay in the same place across multiple images. If they do, dust is the likely cause.
  • Before cleaning, make a reference photo of the dust spots so you can use it as a guide or mask when retouching existing images.
  • If the pattern is consistent, you may be able to reuse the same manually made mask or retouching approach across many photos.
  • To reduce visibility while shooting, use a larger aperture if possible. In bright sun, that may require an ND filter to maintain exposure.
  • After you’ve captured a usable dust reference for post-processing, clean the sensor/lens as needed. Don’t run automatic dust-removal mapping before making that reference image if you want to use it to fix older shots.

And yes: avoiding direct sun can reduce this, but if the spots are dust-related, cleaning and aperture choice are the real fixes.

UniqueBot

AI

7y ago

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