P: Generative Remove Feedback (Lr Classic & Lr Eco)

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This post applies to Lightroom Classic and the Lightroom Ecosystem products.

Camera Raw feedback can be found here.

Generative Remove makes it easier to remove unwanted objects and distractions with a simple gesture, even on complex backgrounds. For more accurate results, be sure to include the object's shadow in your selection and/or expand its size. 

Detect Objects uses AI to find the objects underneath a brushed area. The masked areas will now appear larger than the Early Access version of this feature. You can also circle objects for quicker selection now. 

We have also updated the spot selection experience to make it easier to manage variations, switch the fill type, refine the selection area, or re-generate as needed. 

Batch updating is also now supported for Generative Remove spots. 

Try out the latest updates and share your feedback with us here. Please also include the following details in your post: 

• App version
• System details
• Example image(s) if you wish to share

Our team continually monitors this thread to track issues for future improvement. Thanks!

Lisa Ngo: Lightroom Product Manager

Posted by:

[DavidH77]

Sometimes there is a way to do it, sometimes with just the healing brush. As I said, it's just an example of a more general issue I am dealing with on a daily basis. The AI is often failing to recognize peaople and their features if they are in 'unnatural' poses like the athletes I work with. 

[johnrellis]

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@DavidH77: "The AI is often failing to recognize peaople and their features if they are in 'unnatural' poses like the athletes I work with."

LR 14.5 includes a new version of the Firefly Generative AI Remove algorithm. It appears to no longer try to match most shadows and reflections, so you don't need to select those. In your example, simply selecting the wrinkles on the forehead is sufficient -- you don't need to select the shadow and reflections on the floor:

It would be helpful to see other examples where 14.5 Remove fails on "unnatural" poses, especially ones in which LR 14.4 Remove wasn't trying to match shadows and reflections.

[alinn7654797]

What does generative remove mean to you?!  In my mind, you (AI) analize the background and figure out how to replace the offending object or part of object I just highlighted - and replace it with the background, hopefully making the background look seamless, not replace a protruding elbow with a whole person - WHO HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING IN THE PICTURE. i DONT WANT A ROCK REPLACED WITH A WHOLE WALL!!. WHAT'S SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?!  "REMOVE" means to take away "NOT TO ADD"! - PLAIN ENGLISH! AI- I CAN PROVIDE YE WITH A DICTIONARY IF YOU NEED!! oy!

[erica60735567]

I would love there to be a soften edge option for instances where the background is a solid color. The way the tool is now, it creates a noticable line where it erased.

[johnrellis]

@erica60735567: "I would love there to be a soften edge option for instances where the background is a solid color."

I agree -- many have observed here that the replacements made by Generative Remove sometimes don't match the photo's tone or noise. To get better matches, these techniques sometimes help:

1. Adobe recommends applying Denoise before Remove. This can reduce the noise, making it more likely the replacement will match.

2. The replacement patch supplied by Adobe Firefly has a maximum size of 2048 x 2048 pixels. If the selected area in the photo is larger than that, then the replacement patch gets upscaled (and blurry). Try removing smaller selections if possible.

3. Conversely, try making a larger selection, even including the entire background. Upscaling of the replacement sometimes won't be noticeable then.

4. Sometimes there's a distinctly visible boundary where the tone or noise don't match. You can often use the heal tool around the boundary to get better feathering and make it less noticeable -- apply Heal in small brush strokes. Or use a Brush mask with maximum feathering, dropping local Texture, Clarity, and Sharpness to their minimum values. Sometimes, making a very raggedy selection around the object makes the boundary less noticeable.

5. For grain/noise in particular, see this post for how to ameliorate the problem by adding the grain back or reducing the grain:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-generative-remove-feedback-lr-classic...

[nathank58160098]

The detect objects feature is useless if when I trace the object, it quadruples the footprint I've highlighted onto everything around it. This is so useless now with this latest update.

[FrankMazz]

I'm not going to read through 1300 comments to see if this was covered. I just want to say the "Detect Objects" feature in the LrC Remove tool is *awful.* Mostly it grabs way too much detail *outside* of my selection area, requiring the use of the subtract brush. Secondly, it's just awful at finding objects, I just selected a fawn to remove from a photo; but the tool only found the head, chest and front legs; I had to add the hind quarter. Just awful! The results were fine but the selection is awful. I'm not good a grabbing screen shots, that would be the best way to show you, sorry.

[johnrellis]

@nathank58160098: "The detect objects feature is useless if when I trace the object, it quadruples the footprint I've highlighted onto everything around it. This is so useless now with this latest update."

@FrankMazz: "it's just awful at finding objects,"

Detect Objects hasn't changed since it was first introduced last fall. Many have observed that it fails in many situations, including skinny objects and objects near the edges of photos.  

I never use it -- it's much easier just to select the object manually.

[gwenrosekrans]

I understand the removal tool, but who on earth would want to "remove a person" just to have it replaced with a random person? Remove means remove, not replace! Please Adobe fix that! Maybe also add where we can add or subtract an area from removal. Example, I tried to remove my husband for a photo so I could use it for work, and it would either replace him with a stranger, or distort half my face. I love the AI addition, but it definitely needs some love! 

[FrankMazz]

Gwen, This may not be useful, but *I think* there is a generative fill
command (Edit menu?) that will allow you to select areas of “your” image to
use in the replacement. IOW, Photoshop won’t go looking for other people. I
had cases where PS will find a person from another photo in the same folder
on my hard drive. I find that practice at the very least weird and actually
quite rude.


Frank Mazzocco Photography Sent from iPad/iPhone

[johnrellis]

"I had cases where PS will find a person from another photo in the same folder on my hard drive."

Generate AI Remove doesn't work that way -- it always synthesizes replacements based on its AI model trained on millions of photos.

[johnrellis]

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@gwenrosekrans: ""Remove means remove, not replace! .. I tried to remove my husband for a photo so I could use it for work, and it would either replace him with a stranger, or distort half my face." 

Remove always tries to synthesize a replacement for the selection that best matches what's left unselected. When you select just your husband's head, Remove must generate something that matches his body and the bits of him showing behind your hair:

  

It would look pretty weird to replace his head with the background vegetation and leave a headless zombie!

So select every bit of him, including the bits showing through the frizz of your hair You also need to select the shadow of where his shirt presses up against your shoulder, otherwise Remove will try to generate something casting that shadow. And finally, you need to add a bit of margin around the selection, something you always need to do with Remove:

Note that it's done a decent job of synthesizing your right shoulder -- if it just replaced that area where your husband was with grass, it would look like your right arm had been amputated.

For more tips about how to use Remove reliably , see this short article:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace/

Most complaints about Remove are addressed in the article.

[Alannah23561231v95o]

When using any of the remove tools, the object or shape I remove becomes a white shadow rather than removing at all...?  I tried to remove a dog from the background here... but you can still see his form

[johnrellis]

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@Alannah23561231v95o: "When using any of the remove tools, the object or shape I remove becomes a white shadow"

Looks like you've applied Remove on top of an AI mask (e.g. Sky). Is the AI Edit Status button yellow? Click it and then Update:

[Saikat Chakraborty]

In some cases the removed area has different adjustments than the rest of the page if an adjustment was performed before applying generative remove.

[johnrellis]

@Saikat Chakraborty: "In some cases the removed area has different adjustments than the rest of the page if an adjustment was performed before applying generative remove."

You likely applied Remove on top of an AI mask, e.g. Background. Is the AI Edit Status button yellow? Click it and then Update:

[Saikat Chakraborty]

I see, thanks for that tip, will apply appropriately. However it was not on a AI mask though. Its just that sometime we have to do the Generative Remove first and then apply adjustment it seems.

[johnrellis]

@Saikat Chakraborty: "However it was not on a AI mask though. Its just that sometime we have to do the Generative Remove first and then apply adjustment it seems."

Besides the Masking components (Subject, Sky, Background, Landscape, Objects, People), other features that use AI masking are Lens Blur and Adaptive Color.  Applying Remove on top of any of those can cause the symptoms you reported.  

If the AI Edit Status button was yellow, when you click on it it will show the AI tools you used.

If the AI Edit Status button was NOT yellow, then something unusual is happening with that photo. Please do Metadata > Save Metadata To File to save the edits in the photo. If it's a JPEG, attach it here. If it's a raw, please upload the raw and its .xmp sidecar to Wetransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive or similar free service and post the sharing link here.

[davidlloydsf]

The remove tool in photoshop is remarkable. However, Lightroom's generative remove ai tool is much less sophisticated.  How come Lightrooms remove features aren't as good or better than photoshop, considering the larger data set? It would be a much more seamless workflow for photography retouching.

[Armin Fuchs]

Hallo. 

KI verweigert den Dienst bei manchen Photos.

'Richtlinien' oder so ein Unsinn ... - zwei kleine Engelstatuen werden als unzulässig eingestuft!

Ihr habt noch viel Arbeit vor Euch!

Und die ganzen Zensurmaßnahmen nerven nur noch!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen - Armin Fuchs.

[Michael van Bevern]

No idea what happened. I use generative removal very often, and up until a few days ago I was generally quite impressed with the tool. Since the latest update, I can only say that to a limited extent. Suddenly, not only the marked areas but also directly adjacent areas are being deleted or distorted. I now often need many more variations than before to get a halfway satisfactory result. In some cases it doesn’t work at all anymore, because the distortion of the surrounding areas can’t be avoided and leads to the most absurd results. I also don’t understand the new “Remove reflections” feature at all — for me, large areas are seemingly blurred completely at random, but reflections are not removed.

[johnrellis]

@Michael van Bevern: "Suddenly, not only the marked areas but also directly adjacent areas are being deleted or distorted."

A couple of others have reported this issue:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-gen-remove-now-changes-elements-outsi...

It would help everyone (users and Adobe) to understand the issue better and use the tool more effectively to see more examples -- please attach here some full-resolution JPEGs of the original, unedited images, and also include screenshots showing the Remove selection you've made (in red) and the end result. Screenshots by themselves won't help develop more effective techniques for using the current tool.  

[elizagavila]

Please, please fix this "AI status" error.

I remove an object, leave it the way I want, continue editing other photos in sequence, and when I return to the photo I removed, the AI status shows an error and asks me to redo the entire removal process.

If I removed it and am satisfied, there's no reason for the AI to give errors or have "new variations," forcing me to edit and save one by one to avoid losing my progress.

I am completely dissatisfied with this update and this error. I hope I can remove and continue editing other photos without losing my AI process.

[elizagavila]

Here's an example: all the details previously removed with AI disappear, leaving only the error. There's no option to leave it as it was before, and it's very frustrating.

I need to edit, save, and only then edit another photo. A process that should have taken an hour now takes a day.

[johnrellis]

@elizagavila: Please add details about your issue to this thread devoted to the problem:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-ai-masks-require-updating-and-or-disa...

Be sure to include the output from the menu command Help > System Info. Continue any discussion there.

Adobe hasn't formally acknowledged this as a "bug", even though that thread has 343 replies in it. They announced that LR 14.5 "contains an update regarding this issue", but they didn't say what that meant. So it's very important that you add your details to that thread (they'll be lost to Adobe in this thread).

The third-party Imagen AI service is (or was) one known cause of this problem.  If you're using that, see here for a safer method:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-ai-masks-require-updating-and-or-disa...