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

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This post applies to Lightroom Classic and the Lightroom Ecosystem products.
Post Camera Raw feedback here

This thread is now closed. Please update to LrC 14.x or LrD 8.x. If you wish to provide feedback, please go to the new article.

The Lightroom 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. 
  
  Checkout the FAQ and Best Practices

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 (Dec 2024):  With the new release, it is no longer necessary to perform Generative Remove Operations prior to Cropping. 

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. You can avoid these issues by following the guidance provided in this linked tutorial. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace

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 as a ghost image. If this occurs, you will have to use Update AI Settings, which can be found under the Develop module 'Settings' menu.

[davidd30152025]

I have used this new feature several times and find it promising.  I see it as a quicker way to use AI while editing photos (vs flipping to photoshop).  As others have mentioned, it lacks the dialog box to say "remove person and replace with brick wall...," tho I'm sure that feature will arrive at some point.  Sometimes it works beautifully, other times not at all.  Nonetheless, an amazing advancement for those of us who started in a B&W darkroom!

[reubend35617147]

So far it looks excellent. Rarely do I have to move on to the further options. Brilliant!

[Jeff Friedhoffer]

I intended to remove a person from a picture and expected to have the backgroud replace the person, instead it created a new person, not related in anyway to the person removed.  It made me laugh, but not what I was looking for.  Resorted to stamping and content aware removal

[johnrellis]

@Jeff Friedhoffer, "I intended to remove a person from a picture and expected to have the backgroud replace the person, instead it created a new person, not related in anyway to the person removed."

See this article about how to remove rather than replace objects:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace/ 

If that doesn't help, then upload the original photo, not a screenshot, to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and post the sharing link here.

[Sandra27974680578h]

A veces no borra el objeto, sino que lo modifica por otro parecido: por ejemplo, cambia un barco velero, por otro un poco diferente pero similar. Adjunto foto del original por una de las muestras de la modificación.

[johnrellis]

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@Sandra27974680578h, I had to extend the selection to include every last bit of the boat's reflections in the water, and then it worked well:

 

Including reflections and shadows is important for removing objects. See this help article for that and other tips:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace/

[AshleyMortonPhotography]

Not necessarily to do with the Generative AI itself (which is brilliant) but in the module that opens for it and specifically the eye icon which toggles your edits on and off:

Long-clicking on the eye icon hides any editing you've done so you can see the before and after and releasing the mouse button shows the current version again - this is fine. However, single-clicking SHOULD lock the toggle on or off. At the moment, a single click releases the feature when you lift your finger too. Just a small thing but I think it would be quite handy. I'm sure this is how it worked before the Generative AI update.

[johnrellis]

@AshleyMortonPhotography,: "However, single-clicking SHOULD lock the toggle on or off. At the moment, a single click releases the feature when you lift your finger too. "

Hold down Alt / Opt and toggles will appear that you can click to permanently turn the panel off/on. This change in the user interface for all eye icons was introduced in LR 12.3.

[AshleyMortonPhotography]

Hey John - thanks very much for pointing this out! Very handy (although I think the long click/ single click way worked fine before!)

[Luis Solivan]

As you can see on these screen shots. I've tried like 3 different times to remove the dark area on the grass on the left side and it's not doing it. This is just a small part of the original image. It's supposed to be a very easy thing for the AI but it's struggling to add grass instead of redoing the same dark area again and again.

 

 

 

[johnrellis]

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@Luis Solivan, using the JPEG you posted, I was able to quickly replace the shadow with grass:

The three variants were all useful but somewhat different.

Some things to check, based on this article:

- Make sure you've got a generous boundary selected around what you want to remove/replace. In this example, including more of the in-focus grass tends to make the replacement more in focus, matching the rest of the grass.

- If you've got a crop applied, do Remove, then crop.  The Remove command applies to the entire photo, included the cropped-out pixels.

- Similarly, if you have a lens profile applied in Lens Corrections, uncheck Enable Lens Profile, do Remove, then re-check Enable Lens Profile. (Lens Corrections can crop out lots of pixels on the edges of the photo.)

If this doesn't help, upload the original photo (not an export) to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar, and post the sharing link here. Let us know how you get on.

[Carolyn34101220jpwd]

When editing a rotated photo, the remove tool does not select the actual object that I want to remove. The highlighted area appears on another section of the image. As a work around, I've had to use the tool with the imported orientation view prior to any and all other edits.

[johnrellis]

@Carolyn34101220jpwd: "When editing a rotated photo, the remove tool does not select the actual object that I want to remove. "

LR has long had problems with rotation and local adjustments:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-correct-copying-of-crops-and-local-adjustme... 

Many of the most common, egregious cases have been fixed. I'm not able to reproduce your symptoms in my configuration. Could you please upload an original photo (not an export or screenshot) showing the problem to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and post the sharing link here? I'd like to understand in detail what's going wrong.

[wjmjr2022]

If this is to replace the remove tool in Photoshop, I need it to simply remove the object - not offer multiple replacements.  Is there a way to make it remove without offering replacements?

[johnrellis]

@wjmjr2022, see this article for how to use the tool to remove rather than replace:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace/ 

If that doesn't help, attach the original photo (not an export or screenshot) here.

[Nichole Haun]

Seemed great until i went to export, all corrections were gone they all say "some remove settings need to be updated", so a days worth of editing is wasted... Very frustrating.

[johnrellis]

@Nichole Haun: "Seemed great until i went to export, all corrections were gone they all say "some remove settings need to be updated", so a days worth of editing is wasted... "

The corrections aren't gone -- LR has just decided the AI needs to be recomputed. Select the photos and in Library, do Photo > Develop Settings > Update AI Settings.  Any photos that don't need updating will be skipped.

[imikeh61]

Garbage - removes nothing and all of the artifacts left by previous brush attempts just clog up the space. I pay $21.00 a month and this is what Adobe gives me. The instructions on the Adobe site are the usual clear as mud too.

[imikeh61]

I was wrong - it isn't garbage, it just doesn't do what I thought it would. I wanted to remove  the yellow leaf and replace it with the white siding below but that simply didn't work. I'm sure I did something wrong

[johnrellis]

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@imikeh61: "I wanted to remove  the yellow leaf and replace it with the white siding below but that simply didn't work."

With Object Aware checked, I selected the entire yellow leaf, and Remove added a boundary around it to the selection, resulting it in it being replaced by the white siding:

[Bev37872218gac5]

Is anybody else experiencing a slowdown in Lightroom Classic after installing the update with Generative Remove?  I find it noticeably slower, but wondered whether it had anything to do with another program that linked to Lightroom (DXO Raw), that crashed on me and so I uninstalled it. I have however uninstalled and reinstalled LRC hoping to fix any software issues, but with no improvement in response times. Before I did the latest updated, LRC response time was fast. Thanks, 

[fredericm69]

a peine le temps d'essayer qu'il y a plus de credit, ca parrait bien mais un essai et hop plus de credit, c'est dommage, je veux pas payer des credits sans savoir si ca peut m'etre utile ou pas

[Ian Lyons]

Generative AI has been disgnated as 'Early Access'. As such, any credits used as part of your edits carry no cost. 

[Wiebke37888945kwnw]

I do like the feature - it seems way more accurate than the old healing (or PS spot healing tools) on many occasions.
However, the Metadata logging seems somewhat off, as I have a few photos marked from the LR filters (Library panel) as edited using AI technology, which I edited the last time way before AI was available in LR. Looking into those spots where I used the healing tool, these are clearly marked as not being healed by Generative Remove. Thus images might get flagged for (excessive) use of AI, which were never touched by AI in the first place.

Hope this can be adjusted in a future fix.

[Ian Lyons]

The Content-Aware Remove tool from LrC 12.x uses AI technology, albeit based solely on the pixels within the image. Therefore, any images edited using that tool will be flagged as having AI.