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.

[photosBasWdeZeeuw]

I don't like it either: with each update lately LrC becomes slower, editing not just with the new additions but  also with the standard features

When using the new Generative AI I also noticed that the exported jpg becomes at least twice as big

In general: workflow slows down quite a bit

[frankm29439355]

Same for me. Progress bar takes some seconds to reach 100%, but then it takes a .... few .... few .... few ... minutes to display the result - unaccepatable.

[Jontelcherephotography]

I AGREE 10000% 

Please bring it back to how it was... PS is now easier but such a hassle to open the image into PS to finish off removing blemishes, objects, etc. Ridiculous!

[ob600]

It seems to struggle slightly with items in focus against a blurred background - I've just tried it on images of flowers with stalks nearby that I want to remove. After a great many attempts on one image, it eventually removed the stalk and put a fly in its place - and I defintely selected subtract. Whats more, I swear the fly is looking at the camera - a bit of a photobomb. This AI has a sense of humour?! This is literally my first play with it and it looks cool - going to look for images to mess with. It would be nice if one could choose whether the Add or Subtract option is the default.

[Advarte Fabio C]

Hello,

Generative removal does not yet work well on lights reflected on glass, as they are transparent. Is it possible to improve the cancellation of reflected lights?
Regards

[SuperFabe]

Does (or will) use of the new generative remove count toward the Adobe credits that were introduced earlier?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

@SuperFabe 

Generative Credits are required for Generative Remove, but at this time, Adobe is not enforcing credits for paying customers. More info can be found here: https://helpx.adobe.com/firefly/using/generative-credits-faq.html 

I would expect this to apply while the feature is in "Early Access"

[SuperFabe]

Thanks for the response. I thought that might be the case. As a paying customer of the full suite, how can I send my feedback on this credit system to Adobe?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This thread is the best place to submit feedback. 

[SuperFabe]

Thank you. My feedback to the Adobe credit system.

I can understand the costs to maintain the backend cloud servers, developers and operational support costs that go into it (former IT Management).  Being that the AI/Firefly code will eventually be the framework of all the Adobe apps, I would expect that an All apps subscription increase of maybe some reasonable $5 or $10 annually, single app plans like the Photography or Illustrator plan maybe $1 or $2. would be easier to justify then having to keep track of some mysterious credit based system.  For software that doesn't require a subscription (i.e. Adobe Express), it would benefit from this credit system as it would encourage the user to be a paid member.  Certainly there will be pushback from the Freeware community as they are being singled out with some credit based limitation, but their voices shouldn't count as much as the actual paid subscribers. This method reduces the complexity of the credit system while encouraging it's continued adoption to the paid subscribers.

Adobe already the metrics to determine the operational cost justifications, but please don't try to make Firefly a profit center.

[Don3rdSE]

so you forced me to update LRC for the generative removal capacity and it still doesn't work. And, I can not go back to the old version. How am I supposed to function with a non-working "improvement"? 

[rdverb]

I reverted through the creative cloud app. Delete current version and
install last version

[umlautnord]

Hi Rikk,

I'm wondering if there's any clarity on situations where "refresh" vs. a forced "recompute" hits credits. It seems like every full "Refresh" (i.e. I don't like the 3 variations, try again, or I changed the size of the area) probably debits 1 credit, based on the FAQ page.

However, sometimes a tweak to an unrelated setting, or some other unknown change, will force a recompute/refresh of AI settings generally. That's obviously fine for the local AI stuff (context-based remove, AI masks) as it always has been, but it seems like it's probably hitting the server again for the generative piece. I may be incorrect there. Do you know if these forced recomputes will also hit as a credit?

Or, if there's no clarity now (which is fine), just something to pass along as a situation to figure out! It would be nice if it didn't.

Some other feedback to pass along re crediting is that as this is as a "removal" feature, it may require more small tweaks on the user end to get that removal right. This may be true after the feature is refined and released beyond Early Access. If each tweak hits another credit, that could add up.

It is beyond my comprehension of Firefly/generative AI processing in general, but it might be helpful if there's a way of partially leveraging local computing power and/or returning a less server-taxing "preview" for 0 credits. Newer chips might make this possible. I just don't know.

All theoretical, and kind of all depends on how the feature shakes out in the end, but thoughts I hope are all considered.

Many thanks.

[charlesf1182519]

The tool is a remove tool, but it replace what i want removed with something else, why?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

@charlesf1182519  Make sure you are selecting any shadows, reflections or disconnected components as well as the object you are trying to remove.  Example:  If you take out a person but not their shadow, the AI will assume that something else needs to cast the shadow....

[avid_intelligence01AC]

This is the solution for all those "it's replacing - not removing" issues. Sometimes it can be a very faint relection or shadow, but that's all it takes.

[Daniel31250007k20z]

This drives me insane! It does well for 75% of the removal then just insists on adding something in? Whyyyyy?

[GM Photography]

I have the same doubt. I am trying to remove a person from the picture, but the tool keeps replacing the figure with another person image. Tried it 3 times, and the system generated three different figures.

[umlautnord]

I will also add that even when I am very sure I have selected all of an object, and any shadow it may cast/other effect it may be causing, I get what seems more like a replacement than a removal more often than I'd like. If the object was blurry or amorphous, it really has trouble. Then, it often gives me a blurrier object that's a little similar to the surrounding background—but is still clearly a separate generated entity rather than "erased." The entire Gen AI area just becomes a bit of a smear.

(I do always try the traditional tools first, as they are sometimes more tuned to the kind of erasure I'm often looking for, but sometimes they're not powerful enough/can't handle a complex area. Gen AI definitely does better!)

[Frankie Lee]

I have the same issue.  The feature was removing well when I first started uisng it but when it first came out but now it is creates different variations of what I an trying to remove.  Yes I have certainly selected the whole object and anything connected with the object like a shadow.  Yes I have made my selection larger including plenty of surrounding area.  Yes I have tried any other suggestins mentiond here but nothing is working.  I had people and usually it takes three or four attemts before I finaly get a version that removed the person instead of adding some other person.  I have an out of focus rock in the lower corner of the photo and I could not get it removed despite 10 attempts. 

This is an issue in my honeset opinion.

[John R Ellis]

@Frankie Lee: "I have an out of focus rock in the lower corner of the photo and I could not get it removed"

This sounds like you're editing a photo that you've cropped, enabled Lens Corrections, or applied Transform. As explained this help article, in those cases, some of the pixels of the rock could have been cropped out so you're not selecting all of them. Remove operates on the entire uncropped photo, so if you don't select all of the rock's pixels, Remove will try to match the unselected pixels.  Try temporarily disabling the crop, Lens Corrections, and/or Transform before apply Remove.

If this doesn't help, please attach the photo here so we and Adobe can see what the issue is.

[brianp36230040]

These suggestions did help. Thank you.

[John R Ellis]

That's good. Hopefully Adobe will figure out a smoother way of handling cropped-out pixels.

[gezap72089862]

Great feature. The initial selection removed the object almost completely. Hitting the REFINE button did further processing and the end result was VERY GOOD. AMAZING.

[Lillo26862514x1oc]

Very Nice, TY Adobe