P: New AI-powered Generative Remove (Early Access) available across all surfaces.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This post applies to Camera Raw.
Post Lightroom Feedback here

This thread is now closed. Please update to Camera Raw 17.x. If you wish to provide feedback, please go to the new article.

The Photography team is sharing an early look at Generative Remove, which makes it easier to remove unwanted objects and distractions, even on complex backgrounds, with a simple brush stroke. Generative Remove is powered by Firefly AI.

How to use Generative Remove on a desktop:

• You can find Generative Remove under the newly renamed Remove panel (aka “Heal”).
• Make sure the “generative AI” checkbox is enabled before you start brushing (note: when unchecked, Lightroom will use Content-Aware Remove to fill your brushed spots). 
• By default, you will be given a moment to refine your selection with an add or subtract brush. Remember to include shadows for a more accurate result! You can also skip this step by holding down ‘CTRL’ on windows or ‘CMD’ on mac as you finish your brush stroke. 
• Once you’re ready to apply and have accepted the terms, Generative Remove will use Firefly AI to remove your distractions and intelligently fill in the space that’s left by the removed objects. 
• Note: stable internet connection is required to use this feature.
• Generative Remove also lets you choose from multiple variations, so you can pick the one you like best, giving you full creative control. 

Please give it a try and share feedback and/or report variations in this community forum. It would greatly help to include details like which app you are using (i.e., Lightroom Classic or Camera Raw) and other system details. Our team will continually monitor this thread to track issues to improve the future experience.

Lisa Ngo: Lightroom Product Manager
Posted by: Rikk Flohr 

Update:

Here are some tips if you are having issues with the feature replacing your object instead of removing it. 

• Enlarge your selection - if your brush stroke is too tight, you will have unexpected results.
• Remember that removing an object means painting over it, its shadow, its reflection, and any non-contiguous pieces. If you leave behind a shadow, a reflection, or a disconnected piece (e.g., a hand on a shoulder), the AI will attempt to create something to cast the shadow, reflect, or complete the unbrushed discontinuous item. 

The recommended order for applying edits is:

1. Denoise 
2. Heal (includes Generative AI Remove)
3. Crop (includes traditional Cropping, Lens Correction, Transform, or any operation changing the geometry of the image, including round-tripping to PS to use Gen-Expand)
4. Global Edits
5. AI Selective edits (Sky, Person, etc)

If you deviate from that, you may see the removed object remain a ghost image. If this occurs, you will have to use Update AI Settings.

[johnb23361187]

I wish there was a checkbox on the new remove tool that says "remove object and replace with matching background". I find that many times when I remove a person, it get a different person. If I try to remove a tree branch, I just get a different tree branch.  I want the object removed.

[Erik Bloodaxe]

Take note of this as stated in this discussion thread on May 24:

"Substitutes come most often from not removing Cast Shadows, Reflections and non-contiguous parts of the object being removed.  If you get a phantom, you likely need to examine your removed item for those items. 

If the AI sees a shadow outside the remove area, it will try to provide an object to cast it..."

[ejcphotography]

For the small amount I tried this today, wow!!  I'm utterly impressed!  I usually use the "Heal" feature and this new AI feature was so much better and saved me a ton of time!  What a great update to Lightroom!  Thank you!

[Precious_Songbird5C7D]

I keep running into the issue of trying to remove people and instead it just generates a new person. 

[Nikontraveler]

Are you trying this in Photoshop or Lightroom Classic?  I've had good results (Not Perfect) in Lightroom Classic. I've had fairly good lick removing people, garbage cans, signs, posts, tree branchs etc. I have not tried this in Photoshop.

[Precious_Songbird5C7D]

Both but with similar results. It was working before but the last few days it's been doing this.

[alan33@aol.com]

Generative remove doesnt seem to work very well or at all removing items from backrounds that are way out of focus. Like the cars in the background of this image. (I know, I should have put up a backdrop when I shot it instead of relying on software)

[gary_sc]

Tell the customer that it's corgie litter in the background. I'm sure they'll understand.

Meanwhile, it's time for the Rubber Stamp Tool

[Ash Mills Photography]

Having the AI remove in Camera Raw is great, but I wish it it could be trained to do what it is branded for - "Remove"  - rather than "Replace"   -  So often you try and take people out of the background and all three AI generative options are not the background but a different set of people.  Remove should look to produce more minimalist results, without the thing being removed, rather than a different thing.  Cheers.

[Street_Photographer5225]

How to solve this problem?

[Marko Subotin]

Well, you guys have made a tool that is helping A LOT! Thanks for that. Keep up the good work!

[Rex Anthony Lucas, CPP]

I have read the relevant posts looking for a solution. I have been using LRC for a number of years. I also use other software for my work. I have 'VERY" recently begun using the "Generative Removal" tool in LRC.  The performance continues to be eratic. Instead of removing objects, nine times out of ten it replaces one object with another. Any available solutions as yet?

[DennyJetTone]

I'm getting better and better results the more that I use the tool and try to figure out what usually works and why.  

♦Early on I discovered that if I had been using the Healing Brush with an Opacity setting less than 100, that setting remained when using the new tool.  That explained a couple of particularly bad results.

♦Trying to get a clean removal-and-b'ground-fill seems to rarely get better on a Refresh, but more tries at initial masking, might do the trick or provide a result that could be successfully worked with a different tool.
♦Sometimes making the brush larger and/or making the mask a little sloppy gives better resluts to me.

♦Best results for me come when using the tool before any other adjustmens other than global Noise Reduction.

♦Try using different combinations of "Generative AI" and "Object Aware" ...

►One or the other

►Both

►or even None, which might give a result that could be worked successfully witn a differnt tool.

—Denny

[sfarkas92]

It works great for the most part, I wish I could edit the spots after ward because he makes it blurry and muddy looking. I wish I could sharpen or add grain to it!

[calvin_gustinov_jaya]

awsome

[ttoomuch]

AI sometimes doesn´t remove what you want and keeps on trying to replace it with something else. B.E. Trying to remove a person inbetween others, I can´t enlarge the selection more than what´s the person, there's plenty of wall samples around in the picture, but still, all the proposals are replacing the person with another one, none of the options is replacing by the wall reference all around. A simple prompt box would be welcome. Something like "replace by: ---"

[DhandaNot]

The remove works well at times, but sometimes it gets it totally wrong.  I am sharing an example of how it got totally wrong, even after refreshing twice.

[gary_sc]

Hi, @DhandaNot, please take a step back and think about what you are trying to remove: you have a stick going from one side of the image to the other, and you are trying to remove the middle. Keep in mind that one of the strengths of AI is to try and make sense of what it's doing. It sees the beginning of the stick, and it sees the end. Having nothing in the middle makes no sense to AI, any more than having a shadow and not having anything MAKING that shadow — so it has to provide something. 

Please try this: 1) Be sure you have not cropped the image at all; un-crop if necessary. Select the entire stick AND any shadow of the stick. See if that works, and let us know.

[LMass]

Generative AI oesn;t work as well in LR as in PS

[Foxtoast]

Could you please stop the remove tool from adding other random things, most of the time I am looking for a blank wall, empty grass, not bicycles, peoples faces etc

cheers

[ttoomuch]

You're absolutely right. Remove is remove, replace is something else. As a wedding photographer, I often want to remove a person, why should I want to get somebody else in its place? It doesn't make sense. The fact is that Generative filling works the same bad way in Photoshop, even with prompts. Yesterday I had to remove a crane from the sky and a building, it kept replacing it with other cranes (uh?), even prompting "empty sky" or "match building shape and windows without crane" Very frustrating!

Cheers

[MrBigTree]

The ai generative fill seems to be a different resolution than the rest of the image, rendering it unusable for me. 

[_hlam_]

The firefly a.i model being used behind the scene can only generate a max res of 1024X1024 at a time.  Any region larger than that results in a generation which is upscaled from 1024px which is probably whats happening for you.  The only way around it is to use it on smaller areas.  try and split up your generations if possible