Removing Dust > Preparing for Dust Removal >

# Deciding on Manual or Automated Dust Removal

There are two methods you can use to remove artefacts—manual or automated. With the manual method, you visually identify artefacts frame by frame and specify the area where you want to apply a mask by drawing boxes around them as you go along. With the automated method, Lustre searches for artefacts and creates the boxes automatically, based on search criteria that you specify.

These methods of dust removal only apply to motion estimation.

The method you choose depends on the nature of your footage—how much dust is on it and the complexity of the motion in it. Automatic removal is faster, but you may experience problems with it if the footage has a lot of fast motion or highlights in the motion or elsewhere in the footage. In this kind of footage, the automatic method may mistakenly identify motion as dust, and the clean up job afterwards may be more effort than using manual removal. As a general rule, choose manual removal for footage with complex motion and little dust (most normal feature work), and automatic removal for footage with less motion and large amounts of dust.