Every control DustMagic exposes lives in the right-hand panel, with a few buttons in the toolbar. If you only learn three: Film Type, Sensitivity, and the Conservative profile.
Profiles
- Conservative — recommended starting point. Catches most real dust, low false positives.
- Balanced — more aggressive. Use on older or dustier scans where Conservative misses defects.
- Save Profile / Load Profile — store named presets (e.g. “Kodachrome slides”). Your two most recent appear as quick buttons.
Film Type
The single most important setting. Tells the detector which way around your image is.
- Slides (dark dust) — positives. Dust appears dark.
- Negatives (light dust) — inverted scans. Dust appears bright after inversion.
Setting this wrong is the most common cause of bad results.
Defect Size
- Smallest Defect — minimum size in pixels. Raise to ignore grain and noise.
- Largest Defect — maximum size. Lower if image features are being flagged; raise for stains or large blotches.
- Max Fibre Width — widest a mark can be before it’s treated as a dust spot rather than a fibre or hair.
Sensitivity
The master detection control.
- Move left for fewer detections (fixes false positives).
- Move right for more detections (catches missed dust).
Advanced Settings
Click ▶ Advanced Settings to expand.
- Minimum Contrast — how strong the dust signal must be against its surroundings. Raise to suppress false positives on smooth skies; lower to catch faint contamination.
- Texture Penalty — suppresses detection in detailed areas (foliage, fabric, hair). Raise if textures are flagged as dust; lower if dust over detail is being missed.
- Focus-Based Filtering — uses the sharper edges of dust vs. grain to separate them. Disable for very sharp macro-DSLR scans where the gap narrows and real dust gets suppressed.
- Scratch Detection — finds thin linear marks the standard detector misses. Sub-controls: Sensitivity, Min Length (raise to ignore short fibres), Max Width (above which marks are treated as dust spots).
Processing
- Detection Resolution — resolution at which detection runs. Lower is faster while tuning. Output is always saved at full resolution.
- Process Batch — cleans every image in the folder using current settings. Output goes to a
cleanedsubfolder; masks to_masks. Originals are never modified.
Sweet Spot Recipes
- Modern colour negatives, lab-processed — Negatives + Conservative.
- Slides, well-stored — Slides + Conservative. Nudge Sensitivity right one notch if dust is missed.
- Older or dustier scans — Balanced. Raise Texture Penalty if faces show false positives.
- Sharp macro-DSLR scans — Conservative; disable Focus-Based Filtering if dust is missed.
- Visible scratches on skin or sky — enable Scratch Detection; raise Min Length if short fibres are flagged.
Next Steps
- See settings in action across the five view modes — 2.2: Before & After Visualization.
- Save a tuned setup as a profile — 2.1: Dust Magic Profiles Explained.
- Working a folder with exceptions — 4.1: Cleaning Scanned Film Photos.