Last night at work, I snuck into the ladies lounge to try a little Light Painting experiment while the guys were watching MMA fighting in the control room. 
I was shooting in RAW using my Canon XSI with the 18-55 kit lens. Prior to shooting, I cleaned the lens with a Zeiss wipe, probably not the best cleaning job but all I have to work with. Probably time to look into better cleaning equipment.
I am including two different renderings of one single shot. I know the shot is no good but the speck problem is really the issue here.
When first opened in Digital Photo Professional, I noticed these strange little light specks all over the image. Then they automatically kind of diminished a little. 
But you can still see them faintly. I converted and saved to JPG and reduced size using Photoscape, but no other manipulation. I am assuming this is some sort of dust information, because they appear in the exact same spots in several different photos, including shots from a different angle. But where is it coming from? Inside the camera or outside on the lens surface?
(No idea whey the pics are two different sizes. Changed them to the exact same dimensions several times in Photoshop. Maybe I just need a nap...)
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The next thing I did was open the RAW image in CS5. I noticed as it opened that the dots were initially bright, but then automatically pretty much disappeared, as evidenced by the second copy. Does PS always do this automatically? As you can see, the photos are much different in respect to exposure, although I did nothing to either of them to change anything except resizing both copies to 30%.
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Really curious as to where the specks are coming from, how to get rid of them, and why PS changed the photo so much without any input from me. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. I love this forum, I have learned so much just from searching and reading!! You guys rock!
