Hello again, I wonder if there is a method to remove the spots caused by smaller aperture openings.
I usually use f 11+ for long exposure night shots.
Here is an example of a dramatic sky background with spots:
Sorry if this has been discussed before, I couldn’t find any relevant posts 
I use the healing tool of GIMP, works great for this
Thank you agriggio, I am currently using Raw Therapee and I wonder if it has a similar function 
Could you upload the image here? I can’t see any spots in the small preview and the site the image links to is not showing any image (probably some crappy JavaScript thing going on that I am not interested in figuring out).
This is Alexander the Great by the way, he named my city where this statue stands after his sister Thessaloniki 
I don’t see any “diffraction spots”, I see plain old dust spots. Tools such as the healing brush are the standard. If shooting a panorama, I’d instead use a flat-field to automatically remove them.
Thank you, I am a newbie photographer and I didn’t know the exact name for these spots.
I hope that they are not caused by real dust and they are just called this way!
As I wrote above, they do occur only when shooting small apertures.
I will give the healing brush a try and I will get back to you in a few hours 
Well, they are indeed dust spots, as the name says 
They are made more visible by smaller apertures. Nothing to worry about IMHO. When they start bothering you too much you should be able to blow them away with some dust cleaning tool. Some cameras have a dedicated “dust cleaner” function that might also be sufficient in some cases.
We have to disappoint you: They’re called so for a reason.
That is to be expected.
Topic title updated, and I added a link to GIMP’s documentation on the healing tool to my previous reply.
My camera and lenses are brand new so I hope it’s nothing serious as you suggested.
I will revisit the cleaning options of my device asap!
Thank you and sorry for the title blunder
One more thing, I’ve just downloaded RawTherapee 5 and I read that it has a brush tool and a dedicated spot healing function but I am not able to find the corresponding menu items.
Can anyone please tell me where are the above functions?
Dust, usually on the sensor, is nothing unusual on cameras with removable lenses. One must learn to live with it, and learn to switch lenses as fast as possible. A day after getting my first DSLR I picked up a greasy salty “dust” spot on a Belgian beach, and no cleaning solution managed to remove it… My lens switching technique was much improved by the time I bought my second camera
It does not, where did you read that?
On the Google link, before downloading.
It’s ok though as I was going to update to RT5 anyway
Which google link? I want to make sure we don’t have any misinformation.
Petpixel or similar had mentioned the local lab builds, maybe that’s it?
I downloaded GIMP and used the healing brush. It worked beautifully but it only allows me to save in .xcf format 
Is there any way to save in .jpg format or convert .xcf to .jpg ?
