P: (AI) Remove Power Lines, Overhead Cables, and Wires

[StanPinchukPhoto]

Love the new feature for AI distractions of people and reflections.. Lets expand on that!!

As a wedding photographer I am constantly removing power lines, stop signs, or just signs in general, exit lights.. It would HUGE if these were added as additional AI options for distraction removal. Feels like it would be a fairly easy addition. 

Posted a screenshot as an example.. AI generative fill defintely takes care of it no problem but would save time if we didn't need to manually select it. 

[Conrad_C]

How does this make any sense from a UX perspective? Someone is making these decisions and that one would keep me up at night. Objectively it makes no sense. 

By @curt.gallery

It may be because it’s not a UX problem at all. It probably has a lot more to do with the fundamental technical difference between Photoshop and Lightroom.

Photoshop is a traditional pixel editor. Making edits and calculating from image data is done in a certain way that is appropriate with that. For example, you start from the image channels (such as RGB and CMYK) and analyze it from there to do things like remove objects. The results are, in many cases including distraction removal, rendered immediately to pixels.

Lightroom and Camera Raw are parametric raw editors. Making edits and calculating image data is done in a way appropriate with that. For example, you start from the mosaiced camera sensor raw data, and analyze it from there. Photoshop doesn’t have to do that, but working from raw adds a layer of additional real-time calculation that Lightroom and Camera Raw have to do. The results are not rendered into permanent pixels until export. 

That fundamental difference leads to all kinds of other differences. Photoshop has lots of features Lightroom hasn’t got even after 18 years. But Lightroom has features Photoshop hasn’t got even after 35 years. They have some features with the same name but have very different code, such as the HDR edit, HDR merge, and panorama merge features.

Yes, Camera Raw/Lightroom both got the Remove tool. But the early versions of the Remove tool in Camera Raw/Lightroom were horrible compared to the Photoshop version, probably because it was more difficult to fit that into a raw processing pipeline and have it not be slow. Only recently has the Camera Raw/Lightroom version gotten up to the Photoshop level. This is partly because the coding challenges are different based on how a pixel editor works vs. a raw editor.  

You said wire and cable removal is missing from Lightroom. Sure, but it goes the other way too. Lightroom/Camera Raw got fantastically powerful parametric masks and people masks long before Photoshop did (Photoshop still cannot do parametric masks). And Photoshop does not have reflection removal or advanced noise reduction, while Lightroom/Camera Raw got both of those first. Probably the reason Lightroom/Camera got reflection removal and AI denoise first is that both work best with raw files, but Photoshop can’t work with raw files (that is why Photoshop needs Camera Raw to pre-process raw files for it).

I don’t work for Adobe, but I think they would like to give both their pixel editor (Photoshop) and raw editors (Lightroom/Camera Raw) similar capabilities and similar UX. But the different coding challenges of those two types of photo editor make it unrealistic to expect them to have feature parity all the time. But it’s obvious they work at it, so sometimes the answer is to have some patience.

[johnrellis]

"but not wires and cables which is still in Photoshop requiring coverting your images to Tiff and doing a round trip from Photoshop?"

To clarify for future readers: While there is not (yet) a Distraction Removal option for wires and cables, it is easy to remove them using Generative AI Remove. It takes a little more time but does get the job done.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-ai-remove-power-lines/idi-p/15413258

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-ai-remove-power-lines/idi-p/15413258

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

If this feature would be of benefit to you, remember to upvote at the top of this thread!

[curt.gallery]

I understand pixel vs raw very well, having been a photographer for decades. Photoshop and Lightroom share the same Adobe Sensei AI engine. The point I want to raise about why some tools exist in Photoshop but not in Lightroom is this: There is no fundamental difference between removing distracting people and removing distracting power lines in terms of processing. If Lightroom can use AI to detect and remove entire people, then removing a thin linear object like a wire should be less complex. People have varied shapes, shadows, and occlusions, so Lightroom is technically capable of handling more difficult cases. It is not a raw vs pixel situation. Lightroom does use pixels it just saves it as metadata and applies it on export.