# Slow SPOT Removal



## ryee3 (Oct 25, 2015)

Hi!

I have a lot of dust spots on one of my digital files that I am touching up.  The more spots I remove, the slower the process becomes.  Anything to do to resolve this???   I have tried to optimize my Lightroom catalog as well as my computer to improve the speed but it becomes unbearable slow.

Thanks for your help.  Apologize if this has been already addressed.

ryee3


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## Tony Jay (Oct 25, 2015)

Hi, welcome to Lightroom Forums!

Unfortunately your observations have a lot merit.
These type of edits are very processor intensive and really do slow things down.
I guess the real solution to this is prevention!

Tony Jay


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 25, 2015)

One thing I found is that certain other edits, especially Dehaze, increase the lag. The reason is probably that Dehaze is calculated based on the entire image, so any changes to the image will force a recalculation. So do your spot removal as the very first edit.


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## ryee3 (Oct 25, 2015)

thanks!


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## Harper (Nov 7, 2015)

I've given up with the speed of spot removal in LR so I send it over to PS and have no problems


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## Hoggy (Nov 8, 2015)

Another option, especially if you have large raws - is to import everything to a mapped network drive and build smart previews.  And then when you want more in-depth spot removal, just disconnect that mapped drive so LR only uses the smart previews.
The mapped drive doesn't even have to be on a network, per se.  Just pick a local drive, set up some directory to share, and them map that share.

That's one reason I wish LR had an 'offline' option - to work on the smart previews.  That's one area I think Capture One has a leg up on LR..  They only have one type of preview, period - 'smart' - which it's size is also settable no less.  However C1 also lags behind LR in many other areas currently, including spot removal.


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 8, 2015)

Hoggy said:


> Another option, especially if you have large raws - is to import everything to a mapped network drive and build smart previews.  And then when you want more in-depth spot removal, just disconnect that mapped drive so LR only uses the smart previews.
> The mapped drive doesn't even have to be on a network, per se.  Just pick a local drive, set up some directory to share, and them map that share.
> 
> That's one reason I wish LR had an 'offline' option - to work on the smart previews.  That's one area I think Capture One has a leg up on LR..  They only have one type of preview, period - 'smart' - which it's size is also settable no less.  However C1 also lags behind LR in many other areas currently, including spot removal.



I've read this tip somewhere too, and while it is a nice idea in general, I don't think it will work well for spot removal. The problem is that the smart previews are much smaller than the original, so you are going to miss quite a few smaller spots. They are going to be too small to notice in the smart preview. So to do this especially for 'in-depth spot removal' is probably going to be disappointing.


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## Hoggy (Nov 8, 2015)

I know I used it for birds in some HDR's a while back, along with other edits.  The tiny spot type of birds.  So I guess it depends on exactly what sizes the spots might be.  At worst, one could take the share offline, do as much spotting as you can, then bring the share back online to do any remaining - or else PS at that point.  But then again I have a, possibly unhealthy, obsession with wanting to always stick with the raw data if I can.


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 8, 2015)

I'm the same. I would never send the raw files from Lightroom to Photoshop to become tiffs, just for quicker spot removal. If ACR can do it faster than Lightroom too, I might use that route: open the raw files in ACR (by using Bridge rather than Lightroom), do the spot removal, let ACR write this to XMP, and then read the XMP in Lightroom.


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## Hoggy (Nov 8, 2015)

JohanElzenga said:


> If ACR can do it faster than Lightroom too, I might use that route: open the raw files in ACR (by using Bridge rather than Lightroom), do the spot removal, let ACR write this to XMP, and then read the XMP in Lightroom.



Would that be able to work with DNG somehow?  Such as do you know if LR would apply changes from an XMP first, or is there a way to get it to do so?

I remember futzing about with one of Rob Cole's plugins, XeMP IIRC, but couldn't figure it out at the time.  Since then it's become a back-burner issue once I get around to it again - I still have the plugin directory (& presumably the original archive somewhere), so it isn't gone forever at least.


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 8, 2015)

Yes, it would work with DNG as well as with proprietary raw files. And yes, you can first apply some edits in Lightroom if you want to (as long as you first save metadata to file before you open the file in ACR). The only difference is that with DNG you don't get an XMP file, because the metadata are stored inside the DNG, but that is just a technicality.


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