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.

[robertg59245837]

I, too, have experienced difficultry removing people. Firefly wants to replace the people I'm trying to remove with different people.  I've been having better luck removing objects.

[John R Ellis]

@robertg59245837, did you try the techniques in the article linked above about how to remove rather than replace?  If they don't help, please attach the original photo (not an export or screenshot) here.

[Haphog]

I have encountered the same issue .. SOmetimes it removes, other times it just replaces with another object ( or person ) . No clue why .

[Ian Lyons]

@Haphog 

If the AI model is replacing instead of removing, then it's very likely that you've not fully selected/masked the item to be removed. Shadows, reflections and projections not included in your selection/mask will also cause the AI model to replace.

You can see how to avoid this in the below linked tutorial.

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

[Haphog]

Yes , read tutorial and it was helpful .. removing prior to cropping ws the trick.. Thx

[Corniger]

Since it's called remove and not replace, remove should be the only thing it does.

It's nice we get to drive traffic on the Lightroomqueen Blog, why are there no Adobe resources with clear instructions? They should know best....

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

It's nice we get to drive traffic on the Lightroomqueen Blog, why are there no Adobe resources with clear instructions? They should know best....

By @Corniger

My post gets straight to the issues real people are tripping over, so it's getting reposted a lot. If you prefer Adobe resources, try this from Julieanne Kost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkXDukmBNcg and this Adobe help document https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/remove-tool.html

[Corniger]

Thanks for the links!  I've also exhausted various YouTube content that didn't work for much simpler assignments, thus looked and sounded to me like influencer marketing, using specific images that in fact do work.
I'm not complaining about outsiders like you doing Adobe's job, just about the fact this is even necessary. Without said outsiders, users would be lost. If at least Adobe themselves would link to content that does have correct information! I have, in fact, literally wasted years on blogs and YT (and also paid learning resources, as well as during my studies...) learning retouching technique that was simply BS all along, so I'm always wary.  Adobe Help alone is full of deprecated or imprecise info. 

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

You're welcome @Corniger. Julieanne works for Adobe and is very knowledgeable, so her stuff is always a good bet. The help docs are a bit more hit-and-miss, although we do try to report issues when we find them. It's a full-time job trying to keep everything up to date. Whereas I (and a number of the other experts in this thread) have been doing this from the start, very few Adobe staff have been around so long, so it's more difficult for them to spot issues in older material.

[John R Ellis]

@Corniger, I've reposted the link to the Lightroom Queen article because I've found it's the best explanation to date about how to use Generative Remove. I've reposted it many times here because LR is asking users to provide feedback here, and no one is going to slog through 1300 such posts, and it's apparent that many (most?) don't read the top post very carefully (which summarizes best practices and links to the same article).  I'm not a social media "influencer" and I have no vested interest in the Lightroom Queen, though I participate in the high-quality forums there.

[John R Ellis]

@Corniger, "Since it's called remove and not replace, remove should be the only thing it does."

Having now worked with hundreds of examples of my own and those posted here, I've learned that the closer you look at the intuitive remove/replace distinction, the squishier it gets. A few examples:

- There's a visually distracting tree in the background that you want to "remove". Remove "replaces" it with a less-distinctive tree that blends in with the nearby trees.

- On a bookshelf behind the main subject, there's an ornament next to books with a distracting glare of bright sunlight that you want to "remove". Remove "replaces" it with a row of books matching the pattern of other books on the same bookshelf.

- A woman is wearing a pair of very unflattering glasses, through which you can only partially see her eyes, and you'd like to "remove" the glasses. Remove "replaces" the glasses and eyes with a different set of eyes (no glasses) that are more visually distinct, but you have to choose which pair of eyes (different sizes and shapes, some frowning, some wide open) best matches your intentions.

In nearly all the reports of remove/replace I've worked with in the forums, where users have posted the original photos, we've gotten good "remove" results by following the best practices in the first post and the Lightroom Queen article. When users don't follow those best practices, Remove often generates a replacement that tries to match the remaining unselected pixels containing shadows, reflections, edges of the object to be removed, etc., so the replacement has a higher likelihood of looking more like what was intended to be removed. 

It can be fussy following those best practices: Remove sometimes notices subtle shadows, reflections, or unselected discontiguous parts of the object we don't initially notice and generates a replacement that looks similar to what we want to "remove". I struggled to remove a sailboat from the water until I finally noticed there was a distinct though rippled reflection of it a fair bit below in the picture, and Remove was "replacing" the boat with other boats matching the reflection.  I'm glad that Remove forced me to notice the reflection.

And the "Early Access" (beta) ensures there are rough edges in the user interface making it very likely users won't select all of the necessary bits -- pixels that have been cropped out explicitly or implicitly by crop, lens corrections, transform, and the hidden initial cropping of borders that LR does with many cameras, and the weird behavior of how discontiguous brush strokes behave differently from contiguous brush strokes.

[Corniger]

Thanks a lot for your input and explanations - also, very much appreciated.

Still, there's the semantics between "remove" and "replace". Yes, in fact, when I remove an object, it is practically being replaced by an "empty" background. Visually, it has bee removed. And that's how I,  and apparently many others, would interpret the term, on linguistic grounds. I don't want to nitpick around this any further, but that's like picking the eraser tool and instead, it paints over the erased item - you can't see it anymore, it has been erased.

I have followed all those suggestions and postings thoroughly, all the input I could get. A few easy examples:

I shot an event recently that had lots of messy clutter in the background.

• A remote control on a wall,
• a metal rod leaning against the wall, roughly as thick as a thumb,
• a water bottle lying on a chair behind a laptop,
• a water bottle standing in front of the projection wall,
• a bluetooth speaker standing in the same area,
• an espresso machine as well.    

Single brush stroke remove always worked for:

• both water bottles (even the one behind the laptop on the chair, which I didn't expect at all, complicated as opposed to a BT speaker on a white cabinet in front of a white wall)
• the remote 

Single brush stroke remove sometimes worked for:

• metal rod - it was frequently just being made thinner, skewed, tapered, a dark blotch. All those images very very similar, on some it worked on first try. Eventually, after deleting the remove event and retrying (always 1 stroke, form inside the frame to outside and all the way down), the rod disappeared

Area removal never worked for the BT speaker and coffee machine. I selected an area 2-3 times the size of the item for the BT speaker and encompassing all shadows and more for the espresso machine. I always got a smaller/different BT speaker (or "some object") and the same result for the espresso machine, sometimes a colorful flower vase or some fantasy objects. The bottle, standing in exactly the same area on the same piece of furniture disappeared immediately.

I repeatedly tried removing the object that just didn't want to go, thoroughly painting over 3-4 times in one stroke, not to miss a bit. Not a chance. In Photoshop, I would have the adjacent empty area, copy, paste, blend, gone.

That's why I'd prefer "Remove" and "Replace" separated and unambiguous.

[James28038199th7e]

No serious issues with most edge of frame removal, unless I forget to do so before cropping. 

[Harv25727449l7y4]

Exactly!   Sometimes it works amazingly well.  But I just now had this situation:

- photo of old Model 'A' Ford at a car show - front view with side-mounted spare tires/wheel

- exhibitor had placed a Teddy bear on the running board leaning on the spare wheel

- I selected the Teddy bear using Generative Remove and the Teddy bear was replaced by am image of a young boy.  I have no idea with the kid's image came from! 

[Ian Lyons]

@Harv25727449l7y4 

Typically, the model will use replace when the object and any shadows, projections or reflections have not been fullly selected/masked.

You can see how to avoid this in the below linked tutorial.

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

[Corniger]

What I don't understand is the semantics of the tool. There should be a "Remove" and a "Replace" tool then. Sometimes, I have to go through the 3 output variations just to find a perfectly removed item on Nr.3. "Remove" should be unambiguous to the AI.
Other than that, it's coming along nicely. As opposed to "Generative Expand" in PS, which is a waste of time & resources most of the time, but that's another topic!

[Nick Wilcox-Brown]

In the early versions, generative was doing exactly as expected - removing objects, particulalrly at edges of frames, that previous, non-AI tools would never remove cleanly in Lightroom. In the last couple of versions, this seems to have flipped and as others are saying, the removed object is being replaced with some element of itself or similar. 'Remove' is now generating and substituting, so it is back to PS for the time being.

Here attached 1. the stray edge of curtain that regular LR tools will not remove and 2. the result of multiple attempts with Gen AI remove - this is the best of 5 or 6 goes at removing. Every time a new piece of curtain is generated in place of the removed section.

[John R Ellis]

@Nick Wilcox-Brown: "Every time a new piece of curtain is generated in place of the removed section."

Most likely, there are cropped-out pixels of that curtain that aren't being selected, and Generative Remove is matching those cropped-out pixels. It removes easily from your attached screenshot (which doesn't have cropped-out pixels):

The cropping could be caused by the Crop, Lens Corrections, or Transform panels or, less frequently, by the hidden cropping that LR / Camera Raw sometimes do automatically when a camera's sensor is just a little bigger than the standard aspect ratio. See this article for more details and tips about removing objects more reliable:

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

So undo any Crop, Lens Corrections, or Transform and try it again. If that doesn't help, please upload the original raw to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and post the sharing link here. With nearly everyone who has posted a problem photo, we've been able to show how to quickly remove the desired objects.

[Nick Wilcox-Brown]

Thanks for your thoughts John - I've been using and testing AI remove for many months, so I am aware of how it works, the strengths and  the weaknesses. In many cases it is a miraculous tool and accomplishes task that one might think impossible. However the currrent build appears to be a step-back in capability from previous iterations, whether it is a full, or a cropped image - hence my (very rare) post on this forum.

[John R Ellis]

@Nick Wilcox-Brown: "However the currrent build appears to be a step-back in capability from previous iterations"

I monitor this forum very carefully (as well as use Generative Remove frequently), and I haven't seen posts from other users indicating this. Please upload the original raw to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and post the sharing link here so we can see what's going wrong.

[gabby webb]

I agree with this! This is literally my only complaint.

[John R Ellis]

@gabby webb: "I agree with this! This is literally my only complaint."

The forum indicates you're responding to Tolg's feedback, "the remove doesn't always remove.  It just replaces with some other object." See this article for how to remove objects more reliably:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace/

Most complaints about Remove are addressed in the article. But if it doesn't help, please attach a full-resolution JPEG exported from the unmodified original photo, so we and Adobe can see the issue in detail. With nearly everyone who has posted a problem photo, we've been able to show how to quickly remove the desired objects.

[digitaloxygen]

:hundred_points: It's extremely frustrating. When it works it works pretty well. About 10% of the time is works amazing, another 10% of the time it works ok, and the other 80% of the time it doesn't work at all and just adds a warped, distorted, AI version of what was already there.

[John R Ellis]

@digitaloxygen: "the other 80% of the time it doesn't work at all and just adds a warped, distorted, AI version of what was already there."

See this article for how to remove objects more reliably:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/generative-remove-replace/

Most complaints about Remove are addressed in the article. But if it doesn't help, please attach a full-resolution JPEG exported from the unmodified original photo, so we and Adobe can see the issue in detail. With nearly everyone who has posted a problem photo, we've been able to show how to quickly remove the desired objects.

[MarkNF]

Fuly agree. I was trying to remove a canoe with some people. A very small part of the frame that I did not see when I took the photo. All variations replaced the canoe with a water bird, a duck or goose I think.