Why is it so difficult to remove electrical cables with Lightroom?

In the past, the Remove tool in Lightroom/Camera Raw has not worked as well partly because Lightroom/Camera Raw are parametric (nondestructive) editors, compared to Photoshop and other photo editors that permanently alter the original image (destructive). It’s always more challenging to design a feature for nondestructive editors because one edit might have to be recalculated if other edits change, so quality has to be balanced with speed. 

Two things have recently changed that make cable removal a lot easier. One is that the Remove tool in Lightroom Classic now has a Generative Remove option. If you aren’t already using the steps below, especially the options in the Selected section, it works well for me as shown in the demo below: 

1. Set the Remove tool to Remove mode (not Heal or Clone mode). 

2. Drag the Remove tool over the cable. 

3. If you don’t like the result, click the Refresh button in the Selected section. 

4. If you still don’t like the result, in the Selected section click the Fill menu and choose Generative Remove. 

5. If it’s better but still not good enough, click through the three Variations and stay with the best one, or click Refresh. 

You can also just use Generative Remove all the time by enabling the Use Generative AI check box, but it takes longer to process. That’s why I start without Generative Remove, especially for little spots. 

If you have a real mess of cables, that might be too much for Lightroom Classic. Instead, the fastest way would be to use the one-click removal in Photoshop, as shown in the demo below: 

1. Send the image from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop (Photo > Edit In > Edit In Adobe Photoshop). 

2. Select the Remove tool. 

3. In the options bar for the Remove tool, click Find Distractions. 

4. In the Find Distractions menu, click the Wires and Cables button. 

That single click can remove all wires and cables, but check the results carefully for missed bits to clean up manually. For example, the cables are gone but the junction boxes remain.

If these don’t work with the images you use, then follow the advice already given by the others: Please embed an example image so we can see the exact problem you are trying to solve. 

It can be done in Lightroom as well, by using generative remove. Make sure you select the entire cable before you hit the Remove button. If you leave some of the cable, then generative remove will match the new pixels to this, so it creates a new cable.