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 issue 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.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

@StevePillinger  You likely missed getting her cast shadow. If you leave a cast shadow behind, the AI will try to fill in with something to cast it....

[StevePillinger]

Ah! I see now that that was the problem. Part of her shadow extended below the low fence in the picture, and I didn't include that. Thanks for the tip.

[greenflo]

Hey,
Unfortunately, the refine details function from Photoshop is missing in the Lightroom generative Remove Tool. The function is currently unusable for me with high-resolution images because you can clearly see a lot of pixels.

Thx

[greenflo]

sry, forget my screenshot. 

[rolandp72915537]

new classic 13.3 generating feature remove the ability to select the source of cloning or healing when used. I can drag the original source but not the select source to clone or heal. 

[Smolnar18]

Yes, very frustrating to not be able to drag the source to a new/better position, since you cannot see the selected source, only the original.

[Golebiowski]

Necesita pulirse. Hecho de menos que la seleccion funcionara como una mascara a la que le puedes ajustar la luz y la difusion del borde ya que en las bajas luces no se mezcla con el fondo.

[Doug Good]

Wow!  The Generative Remove tool got it right on the first try!

[Dave Paul ACS]

When it comes to removing people from group photos, definitely not ready for prime time.   Instead of removing the selected person, it replaces them with a AI-generated pseudo-person, who invariably has a mangled face and hands, but most importantly was not there.  If the product is called remove, I'd expect it to remove, not invent and insert randomly generated pseudo-people.

It appears to work fine on removing architectural features, and even in the processed images that include pseudo-people, did a fine job of recreating objects (a stair railing, the leg of someone standing behind, etc.) that were obscured in the original photo.

Readily reproducible, so let me know if you want before and after images.

[Ian Lyons]

The result you describe is usually due to the selection/mask not being sufficiently generous around element to be removed or shadows/reflections/projections were missed.

Can you provide screenshot of before and after?

[Dave Paul ACS]

This is a cropped portion of the original image, showing the person selected for removal.  Object awareness is turned on.  You can see that the mask has been expanded well beyond the contours of the selected person.  My intent was to remove this person, not to "replace" them with a pseudo-person.

Variation 1 proposed by AI Remove

Variation 2 proposed by AI Remove

Variation 3 proposed by AI Remove

 

[Dave Paul ACS]

Another example.  I'll give AI Remove credit for Variation 1, which did not attempt to insert a pseudo-person and did a pretty incredible job of creating the shirts of the people behind the removed person, etc. (the missing sleeve on one of them probably due to the white porton not selected in the original).  But Variations 2 and 3 again invented distorted pseudo-people and inserted them into the group photo. 

If AI Remove cannot completely remove the selected person, I would expect it to fail, or to return multiple image variations with the person incompletely removed.  As a policy, it should not invent people to replace the removed person.  If you think it should, the feature should be named something other than "Remove," and/or this behavior should be made an option, not a default behavior.

Original, with mask shown




AI Remove variations

[Dave Paul ACS]

I can see, by the way, that the removal of the woman in the front was affected by her shadow, not included in the mask, on the red shirt of the man who was behind her.  However, AI Remove should have been smart enough to detect this and expand the selection to include the shadow, and then to either increase the exposure on the shirt or generate a replacement portion for the shirt, rather than adding an entire, mythical (and badly malformed) person to cast a shadow in that location.

[Dave Paul ACS]

Another experiment with removing the woman in front.  As you can see, I was far more generous with the masking, and even included the reflection of the skirt in the glass wall of the staircase.  (Mask color changed to green so to show where applied to red shirt.)

If this tool is so finicky that even with this expanded mask it thinks I want to put a pseudo-person in my group photo, it will be completely unusable for the removal of people by the average LR Classic user.  (And we don't even need to consider the absurdly bad rendition of the pseudo-people.)

It did do a lovely job of removing the reflection of the skirt, though. 😊

[juliannas88]

So far not too many issues, I am persoanlly not noticing a time lag as comapred with PS genrative fill. I would likely be using this feauture primarily for removing rather than replacing though it would perhaps be beneficial to have a subtract or add feauture as in photoshop which directs the attention of the AI more precidely. I can see an advanced feature allowing for specific replacement of objects through text prompts to be very useful here. Some glitches I've come into thus far, replacing lines (wires/telephone lines, not replacing all the wires, leaving bits of wire in the frame) replacing uniterrupted patterns (ie. fence post/barrier, replacing most of the fence post but then adding what it thinks a fence post might have like a construction sign or industrial looking object) and occassionally removing people (replacing person with an AI genrated person rather than removing the person altogether) For many of these glitches I was able to simply go over the area with the spot tool to refine the desired replacement with fairly good success but other images it feels more difficult to get the replacement to work correctly. Including images below as example where the AI genrative fill wants to replace rather than remove object and this particular example doesn't feel easy to resolve. 

[Ian Lyons]

If the original was cropped, then the resulting image will contain odd items. Therefore, Generative Remove must be carried out before cropping. The same applies to denosie and local AI edits.

Assuming that it's not cropped, and looking at your results, I suspect that you've been a tad precise with your selection/mask. Attached is what I achieved with a fairly rough selection/mask.

[Hard Coder]

This also appears to apply to images with profile corrections that have pushed image content off the viewport.

[brandons19841015]

This latest update seems to have critically injured the original, non-generative Heal and Clone tools.  They are at least 4x slower to respond, and worse, they cannot be finely adjusted once used.  Any relocating of the sample/target areas can only be made in large distances (I'm estimating 15px or more).  Trying to align these areas along any kind of edge in an image is now impossible!

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

I'm not seeing this. Are you Mac or Windows? How are you moving them (e.g. mouse, pen, keyboard)?

[brandons19841015]

I am using Windows and trying to drag sample/target areas of the heal and clone tools with a trackball mouse zoomed in 100x-300x.  Prior to this update, things could be relocated to the pixel level, but now (no matter how long I click and hold) they only move in jumps of ~15px.

[rdverb]

I heard some mention of resolution issues in early betas of PS. Perhaps
the same issue is manifesting here. I'm trying to remove something small
and the program freezes.

--
Rick
sent from Google mail

[Laura37593636s7ja]

As far as I used it its made its job.

[sjgruning]

Oh my goodness, I am LOVING AI in LR. It is saving me time from going between LRC and PS. THANK YOU ADOBE!!!!!!

[belcamp george]

GGenetative remove on lightroom classic puts something else where I want to remove

[DidoG]

Overall it's a great Job. An improvement area I can see is related to the noise / texture of the replaced area that does not match to the neigboring and let guess the replaced area especially in concert photography where lighting is not the best. I can provide samples if needed.