P: Fill in empty areas in transformed or cropped/rotated image

[Pacoh]

Particularly with architectural images it is useful to transform the image to make building edges vertical or horizontal.   This leaves the image in an odd shape with missing corners that need to be cropped - or perhaps small corners that could be patched up with the clone tool.  However, the clone tool does not work in this case because these areas are outside of the original image.

Why can't Lightroom fill in these blank areas with some added pixels so that this subsequent editing can be done within LR?

[Pacoh]

Just as a clarification, a way this might be accomplished is, following a change of this sort, the canvas could be expanded to a rectangle;  Alternatively, there could be an option in the Transform menu to expand the canvas to a rectangle.  

[Todd Shaner]

Why can't Lightroom fill in these blank areas with some added pixels so that this subsequent editing can be done within LR?

LR is a non-destructive raw file editor, which never modifies the raw file's image data. In order to implement your suggestion a 2nd raw file would need to be created with an expanded canvas area. Given that each camera manufacturer's raw file format is proprietary Adobe may not have sufficient information to implement canvas expansion. Also keep in mind the "modified" raw file copy may not work properly in other raw editing applications, including the manufacturer's own raw editing software.

The simplest way to do his currently is use 'Edit in Photoshop, which also has better cloning tools than LR.

[Pacoh]

I don't think that issue would give a competent software designer much of a challenge and I have little doubt that Adobe has some competent designers.  Notice that in opening a new image in Lightroom, the first step is to build a raster image from the raw file.  It would not be difficult to adjust the size of that raster image upward as part of that construction.  The only added data in the catalog would be four integers to specify the number of extra pixels to add to each of the four sides.

Earlier, when the canvas first needs to be expanded to accommodate the extra editing with the clone brush, it would not be hard to add the step of recording the four numbers use in the future when the image is again opened. 

[Todd Shaner]

Where will the "new" raw data for the cloned area in the expanded canvas be stored? That will take a lot more than four coordinates.

[Pacoh]

Those are simply editing changes to be stored in the catalog like any other editing changes.  

[Todd Shaner]

I'm not sure "simple" is the right word for what you're requesting, but I'll change this to an 'Idea,' since you are requesting new functionality. That will help to get Adobe's attention. I'll also add my 'Me To' vote.

[Cletus]

I think this idea to expand the canvas for further processing in LR has merit.  From the current discussion,  it appears that a container needs to hold this larger canvas,  The logical choice would be an intermediate DNG file similar to HDR, Panorama and Enhanced Details.   Frequently there is so much edge detail that is lost with a constrained Crop.  Often the Expanded Canvas needed to produce a maximum data crop is small and it is hard to justify a round trip to Photoshop just to add a Content Aware fill to an expanded canvas.   Speaking of Content Aware Fill, it would be nice to add that feature to the Lightroom Clone process.

[Lumigraphics]

No. This is a job for Photoshop.

[Todd Shaner]

The logical choice would be an intermediate DNG file similar to HDR, Panorama and Enhanced Details.

Agreed. That way the original raw file remains unmodified and it's more likely Adobe can implement this using the open source DNG file format.

No. This is a job for Photoshop.

I agree that PS has better tools for this purpose, but it would be useful to have this capability inside LR.

[DougB PDX]

Please content aware crop to Lightroom Classic CC.  This would be a huge help for when rotating and cropping to fill areas that in LR we currently can only crop out.  It is a PITB to need to export to PS to simply do a content aware crop, which it could easily be added to LR Classic.

Of course, as others have mentioned, better clone/heat tools in LR Classic would be helpful also, even just for spot adjustments, but the content aware crop is something I'm very surprised has not been added to LR once it was made good in PS.

[Arnie47]

Lightroom supports content aware fill in white border areas after panorama stitching. It would be very helpful to have the same technology also for filling white areas after transforming images with the geometry tools to fill white areas at the image borders (and therefore make them also available for editing (clone tool...))

[Adriaan_S]

Platform: LRC 12, Camera Raw 15, Windows 11 - all up to date.

When straightening an image using the Transform tools, esp. rotate, often some regions with "empty" pixels appear near one or more corners (due to creation of new "canvas" outside of the original image). The bug is that these empty pixels cannot be filled using the healing or clone brush. These areas are also excluded in any of the masking tools I have tried. These areas simply appear to be off-limits to LRC!? It seems like they are on a separate layer - which I cannot access. All I can do is to crop them out, which may remove part of the image I want to keep. Alternatively, I have to create a copy of the image that I process in PS where it is easy to get around this. I can think of no benefit for this cumbersome behavior. Please fix!

Why is this valuable to me.

* It saves time and disk space compared to performing the fill on a copy of the image in Photoshop.

Thanks, Adriaan

[johnrellis]

Adobe considers this behavior "as-designed" -- it's working as they intended.  I'm pretty sure there was an old feature request to allow those white areas to be edited, but I can't find it.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please move to Ideas.

[F1XX]

Panorama Merge has very handy "Fill" feature which calculates quite nicely content aware fill to areas that are not covered in original shots.

PLEASE add same feature to Tranform panel! I routinely do perspective correction and straightening with that panel and while option to "Constrain Crop" is generally the way to go, I find myself way too often widening the crop and exporting the photo to Photoshop to clone resulting white areas with appropriate fill.

Doing that fill right in the Transform panel would be a real timesaver.

It should not be too difficult to implement as functionality is already available in Merge function.

Thank You!

(Attached example image may be a bit extreme. By the way, upper part is cut when vertical transform is applied, it would be nice if it were recoveralble with crop function.)

[F1XX]

I wonder why this post was moved to CameraRaw as it is very much about Lightroom feature... anyway, I hope devs notice this and the feature is really needed.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

@F1XX Don't worry, it's the right spot. The code would come from the Camera Raw team and then filter down into all of the Lightroom teams.

[F1XX]

New feature: "Adobe is adding a Firefly-powered Generative Expand mode to ACR, which will use AI to fill in past the borders of your image. The mode will be available as a technical preview."

Would this mean generative fill for white corners would be available in LR? (Though normal context aware fill would be enough, no need for generative.)

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

@F1XX It's early days for the feature testing in ACR, so it's not in Lightroom yet, but potentially, yes.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Check out the Generative Expand Tech Preview in Camera Raw for early access to this feature. 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/camera-raw-discussions/technology-preview-generative-expand-cr/td-p/1...

[stefantotev]

It would be great to have the option to AI fill in blank areas created when you use the Geometry adjustments.

This is already somewhat implemented in the Panorama merge as an option "Fill edges", although it doesn't use AI. 

[dim1ko]

I'd like to suggest a new feature for Lightroom: generative fill and regular content-aware fill for areas that get cropped out during composition adjustments. This could be very helpful when reframing an image and losing important parts near the edges. Now they just remain white and you can choose them. 

[Sameer K]

Hey, @dim1ko. Welcome to the Lightroom Community. To add a few things.

While this is not possible in Lightroom on Android, Photoshop on Android may arrive later this year to help you fill these gaps with Generative AI and unlock the potential for editing on Mobile. I tried this on iOS, and it worked better than expected. 

I hope this helps. 
Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)