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

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:

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 issue by following the guidance provided in this linked tutorial. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace
• The recommended order for applying is: Denoise - Heal (includes Generative AI Remove) - Crop/Edit - AI Selective edits. If you deviate from that you may see the removed object remains 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.

[BluePacific]

Using Lightroom Classic and Windows 10,  I tried to remove a name on the side of an old steam locomotive. The generative AI removed all but part of one letter of the name-- it made that part more distinct rather than replacing it with the smooth metal surface. I tried again with a larger selection, then I tried various other methods but nothing would remove that one letter.  In fact, once the AI had decided that letter should be boldly visible, none of the other tools would alter it. So, I went back in the history and gave up trying to do this in Lightroom. 

[johnrellis]

@BluePacific, please attach the original photo here (not an export) so we and Adobe can see the issue in detail. If the forum won't let you attach it, upload it to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and post the sharing link here.

[HardShadows]

Seemed to work much better a couple of weeks ago at launch. I could easily REMOVE telephone poles and powerlines...today trying to remove a telephone pole and powerlines that are in the middle of the image and it REFUSES to work properly no matter what i do (small bursh size, huge brush size, object aware, etc) it wants to REPLACE them with other poles and wires, and if in the rare case it trys to remove the pole, it leaves an almost white outline of where the pole was, in essence REPLACING the pole with a now 'white' pole. I'm guessing Adobe tweaked the algo and broke it.

[HardShadows]

with crop removed, and then generative ai removal used. yes, i have lens correction on, as it applys when i ingest images...i'm hoping that Adobe's smart enough to sample an image that has corrections such as lens corrections, and crops applied and look at the obvious data the intended photograph contains and deduce from that intent what it should do with the ai model, instead of halucinating and generating what it feels like.

[HardShadows]

using photoshop ai erase on the same raw image...just a very rough quick 'paint over' with the tool in PS and bam, pole and lines gone. i would think adobe would be using the same ai engine and algo for ps and lrc...but obviously not. seems ashame that we have to hop from lrc to ps to do something that simple..

[johnrellis]

@HardShadows, read all the way to the end past the screenshots.

I got good results on your .jpg by selecting all the wires and the telephone pole at once, with a generous boundary around them:

If you try to do it segments, one piece at a time, Remove will try to match what's left.

I suspect you're working with a raw and not a JPEG. If you have Crop, Lens Corrections, or Transform applied, disable them before applying Remove and then re-enable them when done, as described here:

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

Remove looks at all the pixels in a photo, including those cropped out by Crop, Lens Corrections, and Transform.  So in this photo, it might have been trying to match the replacement against the small bits of wires that were cropped out.

"it leaves an almost white outline of where the pole was, in essence REPLACING the pole with a now 'white' pole"

You were likely applying Remove on top of a Sky mask. Force the Sky mask to be recomputed by doing the menu command Settings > Update AI Settings. Here's an example, where I used a Sky mask to darken the sky, then applied Remove on the pole and wires.  It appears as a ghost, since the original Sky mask didn't include the pixels where the pole was. There's a red dot under the Masking icon indicating that an AI mask needs updating:

Doing Settings > Update AI Settings recomputes the Sky mask with the pole removed, and all then looks good.

This has been a confusing aspect of AI masking that occurs with the older healing/remove tools as well.

[HardShadows]

thanks for the great feedback. yes, i am working on the raw file, for some reason the forum kept refusing to take the .cr2 file saying the file extension didn't match, so thats why i uploaded the .jpg's. i'm still puzzled why when i have teh raw open in lrc and i say 'edit in ps' and it bounces the raw image to ps and ps says 'processing .cr2' when it's opening, so i assume lr isn't sending ps a tiff...and then the ai erase tool in ps worked fine on that raw image when i selected the 'individual' items, and then it bounced the raw file back to lr. I'll give your method a shot as well. I know it's still in 'trial', I'm hoping adobe figures out a smoother less restrictive workflow process...i hate to think that once i'm several steps into editing if i disover an unoticed 'thing' i want to remove, that i have to start going back and 'uncropping, unfiltering, uncorrecting'  steps just so i can remove something i didn't notice or changed my mind and decided i didn't want in the image. But hey, it's still been a good day!

[johnrellis]

The forum platform rented by Adobe is pretty mediocre. But you can upload raw files to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and post the sharing link here.

When you do Edit In Photoshop on a raw, all of LR's current settings get rendered into an RGB photo (e.g. a TIFF) that you then edit in PS. That rendering applies any crop, lens corrections, and transform, so there are no longer any hidden pixels -- what you see is what you get.  This is why so many people think Photoshop gives better results.

I'm pretty sure the designers of Remove didn't fully understand the implications of the current design of Remove -- so much of the negative feedback here is caused by applying Remove after Crop, Lens Correction, and Transform. But that's the idea behind "Early Access" -- get user feedback.

It's easy to temporary disable Lens Correction and Transform -- hold Alt/Opt over their eyeball icons in the upper-left corner and click the toggle that magically appears. But there is no such toggle for Crop -- you have to do Copy Settings, reset the crop, then Paste Settings when you're done.

One design suggestion is for LR to temporarily disable Crop, etc. when you enter the Remove tool, and then re-enable them when you leave (similar to how the Crop tool shows the entire photo when it's active).

[Diego22546367h8kl]

I love this new feature, and quickly I got used to it, now stops working, got like stucked creating a fill for ever and I don't know how to fix it.

It isn't actualy working on my Lightroom Classic and Photoshop either.

Help! 😞

[christiank21264413]

It would be great to remove created variants, that I don't want to use, to avoid unnessecary disk usage in the database.
Just like it is possible in Photoshop.

[winslowm59022753]

The size of the selected area is reduced every time I click with the spot removal tool, very annoying glitch

[Ian Lyons]

If you're referring to the 'Heal' tool, then thsi is a known issue that's been around for some time. It can be avoided by applying the Heal tool before Lens Corrections or Transforms (Auto, Level, Guided, etc.)

[cathxzinha]

After this new update, my heal has been showing up in random places within the image and not at all where I "brushed it" - this happens with images that were rotated, Lightroom seems not to be able to place the location.

[johnrellis]

@cathxzinha: "my heal has been showing up in random places within the image and not at all where I "brushed it" - this happens with images that were rotated"

I've seen another report about this but am unable to reproduce the issue with rotated photos. Adobe is unlikely to pay attention unless they are able to reproduce the problem. Please attach the original photo here (not an export) so we can try to reproduce the problem. If the forum won't let you attach it, upload it to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and post the sharing link here.

[jeanb38270834]

O mesmo problema relatado por @cathxzinha está acontecendo comigo! 

[yybv]

Remove alone was doing an easy and great job. The Generative IA should be an aditional and independent brush.

[johnrellis]

@yybv: "The Generative IA should be an aditional and independent brush."

You can still use the old Content-Aware healing by unchecking the option Generative AI. Or are you saying that you'd prefer to have a separate button for Generative Remove, rather than a checkbox option?

[defaultouiuwjjf0k98]

cela fonctionne super bien ! très satisfaite

[waynekeene]

Today I was working on 500 photos I made several days ago and began using Generative AI.  The results are remarkable! I was thinking this is a "go-to" software update and suddenly it stopped working in Lightroom Classick after performing admirably for 50-some images. I tried closing Lightroom Classic but neither Generative AI nor spot removal tool are now working. Any suggestions? 

[johnrellis]

@waynekeene: "suddenly it stopped working in Lightroom Classic"

Perhaps a network firewall has started blocking the requests.  Try these troubleshooting steps:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-new-ai-powered-generative-remove-earl...

[Sonia38104989axml]

This tool should have the option to remove areas much like the masking tool's negative brush, or shrink/expand results to better fit the addition like a transform option. 

[Krisi]

So far I'm not impressed with this feature in Lightroom Classic. Aside from it just replacing my object instead of removing it I have found the grain no longer matches the picture. I would then need to throw it in Photoshop to add grain. This makes it pointless because I would rather do it all in photoshop then have to correct the grain from what I did in LR. 

[nathalie lecoq]

alourdi énormément l'utilisation de LR et résultat plus que décevant par rapport au meme outils sur PS, voire meme par rapport au remplissage par contenu de PS.
J'ai simplement remarqué que LR freeze depuis l'ajout de la génération par IA meme en ne l'utilisant pas. Je possède pourtant 64Go de Ram dont 20 alloué à LR.... Bref, je préfère utiliser PS pour la génération d'image, ce qui est son but et non le but de LR. Si vous connaissez un moyen de désactiver cette "fonction" sur LR je prend.